White fire flickers from her clawing fingers, the bones broken sticks of charcoal against the dazzle. The skin is blistering, flaking away in flecks of flame, weeping fiery liquid.

Her mouth twists wide open in a smoke-choked scream of agony.

‘Aiii…’

The air trembles, shifts, re-settles.

No smoke. No flames. No fire. Only the eternal silence of the vaults, the Undercity of the Dead.

The girl slides to the dusty floor, gasping.

Slowly, shakily, she examines her hands, finger by finger, palm by palm.

They are undamaged, the pale skin smooth and whole.

CHAPTER 1

Morning mists swathed the spa city of Sulien, mingling with the steam rising from the hot baths and pump rooms.

At this early hour, Orial thought, shivering as she dressed herself, the city seemed like a shadow of itself, the soft rose-tint of its ancient stones dulled to damp grey by the miasmic fogs. Only when the sun had dried the mists would the warm colour of the carven stone begin to emerge and the rose-stone city appear from the fog like the enchanted City of Khitezh in the legends. And by that time she would be occupied with Papa’s patients in the Mineral Water Sanatorium, too busy to witness the moment of transformation she had so loved to watch on her way to the Academie for Young Ladies. But schooldays were over, she was eighteen now and her father’s assistant, working with him in the worthiest of all employments: healing the sick.

The Sanatorium treated a wide variety of patients and complaints, ranging from gout-swollen toes to the many forms of rheumatism. A culvert and elaborate system of pipes drew water from the central source of the hot springs to supply the treatment baths and sprays. Patients attended for an hour or so a day; only the serious cases stayed within the Sanatorium whilst most others took lodgings nearby.

A fragrant aroma of brewing qaffë wafted from the dining room as Orial came hurrying down the stairs. Her father was already seated at the breakfast table, a cup of qaffë (black) in one hand, a pen in the other, annotating the day’s schedule. Orial leaned down to kiss his cheek and sat herself opposite him, surreptitiously adjusting the slipping straps of her clean starched pinafore. Try as she might, she could not achieve the neat appearance of the other nurses in the Sanatorium; a stray lock of hair, a wayward strap, a loose button, all usually contrived to work against her. And Dr Jerame Magelonne was insistent that all his staff should be immaculately turned out.