At last she found the volume she had been searching for and hefted it out in a puff of dust. It was too heavy to hold, so she placed it open on the floor and knelt over it, leafing through yellowing page after yellowing page of old newsprint.

She could not have missed it. It was on the front page.

DEATH OF THE SULIEN NIGHTINGALE

It is with great sadness that we record here the untimely and tragic demise at the age of twenty-nine of Iridial Magelonne, renowned throughout all Tourmalise as the Sulien Nightingale. Her vocal artistry and sensitivity of interpretation were without parallel. Famed for her operatic career, she retired early from the stage on the birth of her daughter to devote herself to her family. However, she was soon persuaded back to the concert platform and her recitals in the Pump Room and Assembly Rooms in Sulien always drew large and admiring crowds.

Mourned by her pupils and admirers alike… etc, etc.

Orial scanned the columns in vain for any clues as to the cause of the ‘untimely and tragic demise’.

The bland words in fading print intimately concerned her – and yet how curious it was to be reading about her own family, her beloved mother, as if of a stranger.

A later issue recorded details of the funeral procession to the Undercity: ‘Crowds of mourners, many openly weeping, followed the singer’s bier.’

Orial shivered; rubbing her arms, she found that her skin had prickled into goose pimples. Fragments of memory drifted through her mind, unconnected as gilded motes floating in a shaft of sunlight… and, just as swiftly, were gone.

Just five years old, she had witnessed scenes, experienced emotions, too terrible to understand.

‘Not in front of the child…’ ‘Take her away, quick…’ ‘There’s nothing you can do now, Jerame…’

It still did not make sense.

‘All right, up there, demselle?’ called the clerk below.

Orial blinked. His cheery voice jolted her back from the shroud-black corridor of her early childhood.

‘Found what you were looking for?’

‘Maybe…’

She was about to close the heavy cover when a name caught her eye. The official obituary column. The stark details set out in tiny, precise print:

‘Iridial Magelonne (née Capelian), singer, in her thirtieth year. Cause of death: an ancient malady known as the Accidie.’

‘What?’ murmured Orial aloud.

‘Beg pardon?’ called the clerk.

The Accidie. It meant nothing to her. Orial lifted the heavy volume and replaced it on the shelf. An ancient malady…

She came slowly, carefully, down the spiral stair. At the bottom, she paused in front of the clerk’s desk.

‘Have you ever heard,’ she said, ‘of an illness called Accidie?’

He glanced up from his corrections, smiled and shrugged.

‘Never heard of it.’