The clarity of the Illustre’s thoughts astonished her. She could ‘hear’ the melody almost as clearly as if he were playing it aloud for her. She reached for a pencil and began to scribble the notes down, stopping to chew the end as she puzzled over the number of beats in a bar. Was he trying to catch her out?

He walked over and stood behind her, looking over her shoulder. She held the paper up to him and watched with a certain self-satisfaction the way his dark brows rose – not in scepticism this time but in slow surprise. He turned on Cramoisy.

‘This is a conspiracy. You planned it between you.’

‘Me?’ Cramoisy said sharply. ‘How could I plan anything of the sort, Amar? How could I know what tune you were thinking?’

‘Look. Look for yourself.’ He gestured towards Orial and she noticed for the first time the ruined hand which the loose lace on his cuff had concealed, the stiffened claw coated in red scar-tissue.

‘I don’t need to look.’ Cramoisy was regarding himself critically in the mirror, tucking back an errant curl. ‘I know she can do it. You’re the unbeliever.’

‘The handwriting is somewhat crude,’ Khassian seemed keen to find any reason to be critical. ‘And she reverses the tails on the quavers.’ He wheeled back to Orial. ‘Did you know the stems should be on the left of the notes above the centre stave line?’

‘For Mhir’s sake, Amaru, don’t be such a perfectionist! Could you have done as much?’

‘So – in spite of the stems – I transcribed the tune correctly?’ Orial asked.

The muscles in his face twitched with the passage of conflicting emotions. She saw that he could not begin to allow himself to hope again.

‘A lucky coincidence. I need a professional amanuensis.’

‘Give her another chance,’ urged Cramoisy.

Orial was angry now. She had lied to her father to gain an hour’s freedom to come here – and now he was treating her in this contemptuous fashion.

‘I think I should go,’ she said, rising.

‘No, no.’ Cramoisy rushed over to her, pressing her back into the seat.

‘Amaru is being unpardonably rude. Amar – stop behaving like a boor. Show some courtesy to Demselle Magelonne.’

‘I –’ He stalked back to the window, his face a mask. ‘Very well. A second chance.’

The music, when it came, took Orial by surprise. The first melody had been simple, a child’s nursery-tune. But this echoed the dark-hued, twisting, tormented line of the music she had first ‘heard’ in the Sanatorium. It taxed her skills in notation to the limit. Her mind filled with darkness; the notes gashed the darkness with the brilliance of forked lightning. It was alien, unlike any music she had known before.

She looked up from the stave paper, blinking. What she had written was untidy, slashed out, altered as she struggled to notate unfamiliar intervals, rhythm patterns.