‘You’re a loyal and loving daughter. I understand that. But whose interests is your father fostering? He has deprived you of the musical training that is your birthright. Forgive me if I speak plainly, Orial. If he cannot bear to hear music played, then so be it. But why should you suffer? It is wrong. Very wrong.’

Orial gasped.

‘There. I’ve said it!’ Cramoisy leaned back in his chair, triumphant.

‘The decision is yours, Orial. Not your father’s. You’re no longer a child.’

Orial looked down at the table; her own hands, slender and unscathed, rested on the embroidered cloth.

Not my hands. But his…

She looked up.

‘When can I meet the Illustre?’

CHAPTER 7

Dame Jolaine Tradescar rubbed sleepdust from her aching eyes and looked down at her work again, blinking.

What hour was it? She picked up the qaffë pot to pour herself another cup but only a cold, dark sediment dribbled out. The oil was burning low in the glass lamp… but daylight seemed already to be seeping in under the blinds. She had no need of oil-light now.

She tugged at the cord and the frayed linen blind slowly creaked up, letting more light into the study. Jolaine slowly stretched, groaning as stiff joints creaked.

She had been working all night. She should be tired. In fact, she had passed beyond tiredness to that state where she moved in a waking dream and a strange lucidity of mind illuminated her thoughts.

She sat down again, eager to look over the night’s achievements. Yes, it was all there, she had not dreamed it! It had been slow, painstaking work to transcribe the indistinct scripts – and then to translate. But she had the beginnings of a match. She had traced enough concordances between early Allegondan script and the Lifhendil hieroglyphs to make a tentative translation:

To the divine [?] Goddess Elesstar. I give to you, Lady Goddess, the gold pendant that has been stolen from me this day. Let the thief, whether man or woman, Allegondan or Lifhendil become as liquid as the black waters of the [[?]] reservoir. May his soul not fly to join the winged ones –

She had underlined certain words in the translation which seemed to link with hieroglyphs she recognised, hieroglyphs which appeared again and again on the temple stelae: divine, Goddess, Lifhendil, liquid, waters, reservoir, soul, winged ones…

She was so excited that, in spite of the stiffness, she stood up and went frollicking out of the Cabinet of Curiosities, seized with an insane desire to embrace the very first person she met.

It was a fine spring morning. The terraces and crescents of Sulien seemed to glow rose-gold. Wild jonquils carpeted the grassy banks in the River Gardens, like pale sunlight gilding the green. Blue tits twittered and chaffed in the branches; willow warblers piped liquid trills from the long strands of yellow willow hair that trailed in the Avenne.