I’d been a good prisoner till then, he pinioned my arms again but I had got the General’s attention. “General,” I said, “may I speak to you alone, only for a few minutes?”

“Ho, I don’t advise that, sir,” said the soldier. “Not but what it sounds like it’s only a girl. But you never know with these assassins.”

“Yes, very likely, but you may go,” said the General. The soldier saluted and departed.

I fell forward into the arms. I was trembling horribly. “They want to flay me.” My voice was small but hoarse: I thought, ‘I sound hideous’ but could not control it. “There’s a reward—they’re all after me.” There was bile in my mouth. The checkered marble was spinning and rising.

“And you came to me?”

At the strange sound of his voice I looked up, my nausea arrested.

His eyes were on mine but somehow did not meet mine. He looked surprised, odd. “Why to me?” he said. His gaze shifted away.

I was so anxious to show that I wasn’t an idiot, that he could help, to beg from him, that I forgot to say that in any case it was an accident that the house I’d come to was his.

“Zerd, I know there is complete hatred between us. but you are the only one who can save me. Kill me, but don’t let them torture me. I am yours, I surrender completely, I am your prisoner but don’t let me be theirs.”

He had lifted me suddenly, one arm round my shoulders, the other under my knees. “Why are you wet through?”

He carried me up the farther stairs, kicked open a decorated door, laid me on something soft. I was warm. I was in a big room, a fire gigantic in the hearth and torches round the walls, I was on a great circular bed which was covered by a musky musty fur.

He took off my cloak, and held my arms, clasped together at the wrists in one of his hands. My teeth were chattering. He pulled my shift up over my head. “Did he fish you out of the harbour?” I had closed my eyes. My eyelids were almost unbearably irritated, as though it was grit and not tears sliding from beneath them and streaming down my face. I felt him lifting the fur in handfuls and rubbing my body with it. “Salt water, it’ll be bad for the fur—” I think I jabbered. He lifted me again. I was aware of the sinews under the scales. He was tucking me into his bed, folding my arms like a baby’s, smoothing the sheet. Was I asleep now? No, I couldn’t be, because there was a thumping on the door. My heart? No, definitely on the door.