Orial nodded and smiled as she worked, hardly noticing what was being said, remembering to look alternately surprised or shocked as each of the juicy details was related. At first she hardly noticed the music. It was distant, a faint trace of something she had heard long ago, perhaps, just a lingering fragment of melody, tantalising in its evanescence. Her fingers worked the hot mud which was to be applied into a manageable shape… and the music became more insistent.

‘Disgraceful at her age… she could at least have tried to be discreet – ouch! Does the poultice have to be quite so hot, my dear?’

‘I’m sorry.’ Orial peeled it off again and tested the temperature of the mud with her elbow. What was that music? Where had she heard it before? It was quite unlike the usual Sulien repertoire, the charming little dance strains whose snatches she sometimes caught floating from the Upper Rooms, the cotillions, caprioles and badineries. This was something far darker, its leaps tormented by a bizarre intensity, the notes twisted into an utterance of a complexity she had never before experienced. It compelled and repelled at the same time.

‘I said, it’s gone quite cold!’

‘Oh!’ Startled, Orial looked up. How long had she been daydreaming? She hastily felt the poultice and discovered that it had indeed lost all its heat. The dowager glared up at her from rheumy eyes, glittering with indignation.

‘I’ll fetch some fresh mud.’ Orial took up the bucket and hurried out of the cubicle.

Next door, Khassian pressed his lips together in grim concentration as Sister Crespine worked on his thumbs. The pain came in bursts: a dull, grinding ache suddenly shot through by jagged stabs of light.

He would not cry out.

Instead he carried on mentally orchestrating the final duet from the opera, the duet that had kept him from sleeping most of the night. Mental discipline. Concentrate on the music. Then the pain recedes to a tolerable level…

Final irony. That the way to improve the ending which had eluded him in Bel’Esstar should present itself to him now, when he was unable to transcribe it. Now it had become an apotheosis, imbued with a dark yet profound sense of bitter triumph, a hymn to the endurance of the human spirit in adversity. He knew it was good. He knew –

From outside in the corridor he heard a voice, low and sweet, singing. Singing the very notes he had been composing since before dawn!

‘Bel’Mhir!’ he whispered, sitting up.

‘Did I hurt you, Illustre?’ Sister Crespine said, surprised.

‘No, no.’ He was already off the couch, making for the door, following the sound of the voice.

‘But where are you –’