One foot grazed against the muddy bank. He scrabbled to keep the foothold and heaved the water-sodden body half up out of the water. Rushing waters still dinned in his ears, a roar louder than the roar of his own pounding blood. Khassian’s body seemed to be slipping back into the river. Acir slithered around in the mud until he could hook his arms beneath Khassian’s and pull him right out of the water.

The last effort exhausted him; he slipped, falling over Khassian, water streaming from his sodden clothes.

‘Khassian,’ he whispered, coughing. ‘Khassian!’

Khassian lay without moving, head lolling, muddy water running out from a corner of his slack mouth.

Sweet Mhir, let him not be dead.

Acir swept the soaked hair from his own face and bent over the composer, one hand on his chest. The ribs were still; he could feel no heartbeat beneath the wet jacket.

He looked desperately around for help – but the fast-darkening gardens were empty. Only a solitary bird sang, high in a bare-branched tree.

He tipped the composer on to his side, trying to empty the water from his open mouth. Still no stir of life.

‘Help!’ he shouted to the empty gardens. ‘Help, here!’ His voice echoed in the twilight – but no one appeared.

There was nothing for it. He knelt astride Khassian and covered the open mouth with his own, breathing in his own panting breath… then pressed his palms rhythmically on the still ribcage. Khassian’s lips were cold and wet, slimed with the foul taste of riverwater.

‘Breathe, Khassian.’ Acir willed life into the limp body as he worked. ‘Damn you, breathe.’

A faint shudder convulsed the composer’s body. He turned his head a little to one side – and vomited up a gush of foul water into the grass.

‘Why?’ he said faintly, and then retched again, ribs heaving now as he gasped in lungfuls of air.

Khassian was alive. Acir began to shake with relief; relief – and cold. Only now did he realise that he too was soaked to the skin. And the evening chill was fast settling into the river valley.

‘What’s going on down there? I heard shouts!’

Acir looked up and saw a man approaching through the early-evening gloom.

‘Can you fetch help?’ Acir’s teeth began to chatter. ‘Th-there’s been an accident.’

‘You stay here. I’ll get help.’

Stay here. The irony of the words would have made Acir smile if his mouth had not been so numbed with the cold.

He could just make out the crumpled shape of his jacket where he had flung it in the grass. He scrambled up the bank and retrieved it, tucking it about Khassian’s body.

Khassian’s eyelids flickered open.

‘Why, damn you?’ he whispered.