She shut the composition in the Treatise and sat with the closed book on her lap, lost in an impossible dream where Cramoisy swept her away to the Conservatoire as his protégé…

‘How is my Amaru today?’ Cramoisy leaned over to kiss Khassian’s cheek, half-stifling him in a cloud of sweet perfume: orange blossom and syringa.

Khassian closed his eyes. He felt too weary, too soul-sick, to make the effort to talk.

‘Shall I read to you from the Sulien Chronicle?‘

He shook his head.

‘Oh, my poor sweet. I know what’s troubling you. It’s your hands, isn’t it? You’re wondering to yourself what your future can possibly be… Now you mustn’t fret.’ Cramoisy stroked Khassian’s cheek soothingly. ‘I’ve had an inspiration. You need an amanuensis.’

Khassian opened his eyes.

‘Dictate my music, note by note?’

‘It’s not a perfect solution, I realise that. But your faculties, thank the muse, are as acute as ever.’

To have to enunciate each note in turn, its pitch, precise time value, dynamic…

The act of composition had become as natural to Khassian as breathing. Long ago he had learned to weave and blend sounds upon the page, to translate the soundworld in his mind through the medium of pen and ink directly on to paper. The thought of trying to communicate his intentions through another appalled him. It would be like – like making love by proxy, giving instructions to a surrogate lover as to how to kiss, to caress, to arouse the object of his affections – whilst he watched, a helpless voyeur. The image, at once obscene and absurd, repelled him.

‘No,’ He closed his eyes again. ‘It’s hopeless. I could never do that.’

‘At least let’s give it a try,’ Cramoisy said coaxingly. ‘We’ve known each other a long while, Amar. I know your music better than most people. And my musical hand was praised for its neatness at the Conservatoire…’

At last Khassian realised what the Diva was suggesting. He should transcribe the music: he, whose concentration barely lasted the length of an aria!

‘Diva –’ Khassian began.

‘No, no, you mustn’t try to dissuade me. It’s a sacrifice I’m more than willing to make. A little less time in the coiffeur’s, or with the tailor being fitted for new clothes, that’s all it will mean. It’s the least I can do for my oldest, dearest friend.’

It was, he had to allow, a noble offer. And Cramoisy, his Firildys, knew his vocal style more intimately than anyone else… anyone else in Sulien. But as to acting as an amanuensis, little more than musical secretary –