Inversions

13. THE DOCTOR

Master, the masked ball took place six days later. The King still had a slight cold, but the Doctor had given hire a preparation made from flowers and mountain herbs which dried up his “membranes” (by which I think she meant his nose) for the duration of the dance. She advised him to avoid alcohol and to drink copious amounts of water, or better still fruit juice. However, I believe that during the ball he was quickly persuaded, principally by himself, that the definition of fruit juice might include wine and so drank a deal of that during the ball.

The Grand Ballroom of Yvenage is a dramatic circular space half of whose circumference is taken up with floor to ceiling windows. In the year since the court had last visited Yvenir, the windows had been refashioned throughout their lower quarter. The great pastel-green plaster panels had been replaced with a grid of wood holding smaller panes of thin, colourless glass. The glass was almost crystal in its perfection, affording a barely distorted view of the moonlit landscape of forested hills across the valley. The effect was extraordinarily eye-catching and it seemed, from the expressions of wonder I heard uttered and the extravagance of the estimates made within my earshot concerning the cost of such a project, that people could hardly have been more impressed had the new windows been made of diamond.

The orchestra sat on a low circular stage set in the centre of the room, each player facing inwards to watch their conductor, who swivelled towards each section of the musicians in turn. The dancers swirled round this focus like fallen leaves caught within a spiralling wind, the intricate sets and patterns of the dances providing an order within that apparent chaos.

The Doctor was one of the more striking women present. Partly the effect was achieved through her height. There were taller women there, yet still she seemed to shine out amongst them. She possessed a bearing that was in all senses naturally elevated. She wore a gown that was plain by comparison with most. It was a dark and lustrous green, to set off the wide, netted fan of her carefully arrayed red hair. Her gown was unfashionably narrow.

Master, I confess I felt excited and honoured to be there. The Doctor having no other escort, it fell to me to accompany her to the ball, and so I was able to think with some pleasure of my fellow apprentices and assistants, most of whom were banished downstairs. Only the senior pages were permitted to attend, and the few of those not expected to act purely as servants were all too aware of their inability to shine in a company containing so many junior noblemen. The Doctor, in contrast, treated me as her equal, and made not one demand on me as an apprentice the whole ball long.

The mask I had chosen was a plain one of flesh-coloured paper painted so that one half looked happy, with a big smile at the lips and a raised brow, while the other side looked sad, with downcast mouth and a small tear at the eye. The Doctor’s was a half-face made of light, highly polished silver treated with some sort of lacquer. It was, I thought, the best and perhaps the most disconcerting mask that I saw all that night, for it reflected the observer’s gaze right back at them and so disguised the wearer — for whatever that was worth, given the Doctor’s unmistakable form — better than the most cunning creation of feathers, filigreed gold or sparkling gems.

Beneath the mirror-like mask, the Doctor’s lips looked full and tender. She had coloured them with the red oil-cream that many of the ladies at court use for such occasions. I had never seen her adorn herself so before. How moist and succulent that mouth looked!

We sat at a great table in one of the ballroom’s anterooms, surrounded by fine ladies of the court and their escorts and looked down upon by huge paintings of nobles, their animals and estates. Servants with drinks trays circulated everywhere. I couldn’t recall having seen a ball so well staffed before, though it did seem to me that some of the servants looked a bit rough and ready, handling their trays with a degree of awkwardness. The Doctor did not choose to stay in the ballroom itself between dances and seemed reluctant to take part at all. I formed the impression she was only there because the King expected her to be, and while she might have enjoyed the dances, she was afraid of making some error of etiquette.

I myself also felt nervous as well as excited. Such grand balls are opportunities for much pomp and ceremony, attracting from all around scores of great families, Dukes and Duchesses, rulers of allied principalities and their entourages and generally producing a kind of concentration of people of power and circumstance one sees seldom enough even in the capital. Little wonder that these are occasions when allegiances, plans, alliances and enmities are formed, both on the political and national scale of things and at the personal level.

It was impossible not to feel affected by the urgency and momentousness of the atmosphere and my poor emotions felt tattered and frazzled before the ball was properly begun.

At least we ought to remain safely on the periphery. With so many Princes, Dukes, Barons, Ambassadors and the like demanding his time — many of whom he would not see from one year to the next, save for this single event — the King was unlikely to concern himself with the Doctor and myself, who were at his beck and call during every day of the year.

I sat there, immersed in the hum of conversation and listening to the distant sound of a dance tune, and I wondered what plots and schemes were being hatched, what promises and enemies were being made, what desires stoked, what hopes squashed.

A group of people were passing us, heading for the ballroom. The small figure of a man at their head turned towards us. His mask was an old one made of blue-black feathers. “Ah, the lady doctor, unless I am grievously mistaken,” came the harsh, cracked voice of Duke Walen. He stopped. His wife — his second, much younger than he, and small and voluptuous — hung on his arm, her golden mask dripping with gems. Various junior members of the Walen family and their retainers arranged themselves in a half-circle around us. I stood, as did the Doctor.

“Duke Walen, I assume,” she said, bowing carefully. “How are you?”

“Very well. I would ask you how you are, however I assume that physicians look after themselves better than anybody else, so I shall ask how you think the King is. How is he?” The Duke seemed to be slurring his words.

“The King is generally well. His ankle still needs treatment and he has the remains of a slight—”

“Good, good.” Walen looked round at the doors leading into the ballroom. “And how do you like our ball?”

“It is most impressive.”

“Tell me. Do they have balls in this place Drezen, where you come from?”

“They do, sir.”

“And are they as fine as this? Or are they better and more glorious and put our sad and feeble efforts into the shade? Does Drezen entirely out-do us in every matter as it does, by your claims, in medicine?”

“I think the dances we hold in Drezen are rather less splendid than this, sir.”

“Are they? But how can this be? I had become quite convinced through your many comments and observations that your homeland was in advance of ours in every respect. Why, you talked of it in such glowing terms that sometimes I thought you were describing a fairy-tale land!”

“I think the Duke will find that Drezen is quite as real as Haspidus.”

“Faith! I am almost disappointed. Well, there we are.” He turned to go, then stopped again. “We shall see you dancing later, shan’t we?”

“I imagine so, sir.”

“And will you perhaps undertake to demonstrate for us a dance from Drezen, and teach it to us?”

“A dance, sir?”

“Yes. I cannot imagine that Drezeners share all our dances and possess none that we would not recognise. That is not feasible, surely?” The Duke’s small, slightly hunched figure turned jerkily from one side to the other, seeking endorsement.

“Oh yes,” his wife purred from behind her gold and gem-stone mask. “I should think that in Drezen they have the most advanced and interesting dances.”

“I regret that I am no dance instructor,” the Doctor said. “I wish now that I had been more assiduous in learning how to comport myself at a ball. Sadly, my youth was spent in more academic circles. It is only since I have had the good fortune to arrive in Haspidus that I—”

“But no!” the Duke cried. “My dear woman, you cannot be claiming that there is some aspect of civilised behaviour in which you have nothing to teach us! Why, this is unheard of! Oh, my dear lady, my faith is shaken. I beg you to reconsider. Search your doctorly memories! At least attempt to drag up for us some recollection of a physician’s cotillion, a surgeon’s ballet, at the very least a nurses’ horn-pipe or a patients’ jig.”

The Doctor appeared unruffled. If she was sweating behind her mask, as I was behind mine, she gave no sign of it. In a calm and even voice she said, “The Duke flatters me in his estimation of the breadth of my knowledge. I shall of course obey his instruction but I—”

“I’m sure you can, I’m sure,” the Duke said. “And pray, what part of Drezen was it you said that you are from?”

The Doctor drew herself up a little more. “From Pressel, on the island of Napthilia, sir.”

“Ah yes, yes. Napthilia. Napthilia. Indeed. You must miss it terribly, I imagine.”

“A little, sir.”

“Having no one of your own kind to talk to in your native language, unable to catch up on the latest news, lacking compatriots to reminisce with. A sad business, being an exile.”

“It has its compensations, sir.”

“Yes. Good. Very well. Think on, about those dances. We shall see you later, perhaps, high-kicking, whirling and whooping, eh?”

“Perhaps,” the Doctor said. I for one was glad I could not see her expression behind the mask. Of course, being a half-face mask, her lips were visible. I began to worry how much aspersion a pair of full red lips could convey.

“Just so,” Walen said. “Until then, madam.” He nodded.

The Doctor bowed subtly. Duke Walen turned and led his party towards the ballroom.

We sat down. I took off my mask and wiped my face. “I think the Duke was a little the worse for wine, mistress,” I said.

The mirror-mask faced me. My own visage looked back; distorted and flushed. Those two red lips gave a small smile. Her eyes remained unreadable behind the mask. “Yes. Do you think he will mind that I cannot provide him with a Drezeni dance? I really am unable to recall any.”

“I think the Duke was being rather rude to you, mistress. The wine was doing most of the talking. He sought only to — well, I am sure as a gentleman he would not seek to humiliate you — but he was perhaps having a little sport with you. The detail of the matter was not important. He will probably forget most of what has passed here.”

“I hope so. Do you think I am a poor dancer, Oelph?”

“Oh no, mistress! I have not seen you put a step wrong so far!”

“That is my only goal. Shall we…?”

A young man in a hide and gem-stone mask and wearing the dress uniform of a captain in the King’s Own Frontier Guards appeared at our side. He bowed deeply. “Master Oelph? Madam Doctor Vosill?” he asked.

There was a pause. The Doctor looked at me. “Yes!” I blurted.

“The King commands me to invite you to dance with the royal party during the next figure. It starts directly.”

“Oh, shit,” I heard myself say.

“We are delighted to accept the King’s kind invitation,” the Doctor said, rising smoothly and nodding to the officer. She held her arm out towards me. I took it in mine.

“Please follow me,” the captain said.

We found ourselves arranged in a figure of sixteen with King Quience, a small, buxom young princess from one of the Sequestered Kingdoms in the mountains beyond the land of Tassasen, a tall brother-and-sister prince and princess from Outer Trosile, Duke Quettil and his sister Lady Ghehere, the Duke and Duchess of Keitz (uncle and aunt to Guard Commander Adlain), their startlingly proportioned daughter and her fiancé, Prince Hills of Faross, the Guard Commander Adlain himself and Lady Ulier, and, lastly, a young lady I was introduced to and had seen about court but whose name escaped me then and now, and her escort, the brother of Lady Ulier, the young Duke Ulresile we had first encountered at the King’s table in the Hidden Gardens.

I noticed that the youthful Duke made sure that he positioned himself in our half of the figure, so ensuring that he would have two opportunities to dance with the Doctor rather than one.

The introductions were made and the dance was named by a very impressively dressed Wiester, wearing a plain black mask. We took our places in two lines, male facing female. The King took a last drink from a goblet, replaced it on a tray, waved away the servant carrying it and nodded to Wiester, who in turn nodded to the conductor of the orchestra.

The music began. My heart was beating hard and fast. I was reasonably familiar with the figure we were engaged upon, but still concerned that I might make a mistake. I was just as concerned that the Doctor might commit a serious misstep. I did not think she had danced so formally complicated a figure before.

“You are enjoying the ball, madam?” Duke Quettil asked as he and the Doctor advanced upon each other, bowed, held hands, circled and stepped. I was similarly engaged with the lady Ghehere, who gave every impression through her carriage and bearing that she had no interest whatsoever in conversing with the assistant to a woman who claimed the honourable but un-noble title of doctor, and so I was at least able both to dance without treading on her toes and to attend to what passed between my mistress and the Duke.

“Very much, Duke Quettil.”

“I was surprised when the King insisted that you be invited to join us, but then he is most… most merry this evening. Don’t you think?”

“He does appear to be enjoying himself.”

“Not too much, in your opinion?”

“It is not my place to judge the King in any aspect, sir, save that of his health.”

“Quite. I was granted the privilege of choosing the figure. Is it to your taste?”

“Entirely so, Duke.”

“It is perhaps a little complex.”

“Perhaps.”

“So much to remember that is not entirely natural, so many opportunities to make a mistake.”

“Dear Duke,” the Doctor said with some concern. “I hope this is not some subtly disguised warning.”

I happened to be circling my immediate partner with my hands clasped behind my back and was facing the Duke Quettil at this point. I got the impression that he was momentarily taken aback, unsure quite what to say for the moment before the Doctor went on, “You are not preparing to step on my toes, are you?”

The Duke gave a small, high laugh, and with that the timeous demands of the dance took both the Doctor and myself away from the centre of the figure. While our other four-set took the centre, we stood alongside each other, our hands clasped or on hips as appropriate, marking time with one foot then the other.

“All right so far, Oelph?” the Doctor said. I thought she sounded slightly breathless, and even as though she was enjoying herself.

“Aye, so far, mistress. The Duke seemed—”

“Were you teaching Quettil extra steps there, Doctor?” Adlain asked from her other side.

“I’m sure that there is nothing I could teach the Duke, Guard Commander.”

“I’m equally sure he feels just the same way, madam, and yet he appeared to lose his way for a moment in that last turn.”

“It is a complicated figure, as he himself pointed out to me.”

“Yet one he chose.”

“Indeed he did. Does Count Walen dance it as well, do you think?”

Adlain was silent for a moment. “I fancy he might, or at least fancy that he fancies he might.” I saw him glance at the Doctor. His half-mask allowed him to show a smile. “However I myself find it takes all my concentration just minding my own steps without attempting to scrutinise somebody else’s. Ah, excuse me…”

Another set. “Good Doctor,” young Duke Ulresile said, meeting her in the centre. His companion, the young lady whose name I forget, seemed no more inclined to talk to me than Lady Ghehere.

“Duke,” the Doctor replied.

“You look most striking.”

“Thank you.”

“That mask, is it Brotechian?”

“No, sir, it is silver.”

“Ah. Indeed. But does it originate in Brotechen?”

“No, in Haspide. I had a jeweller fashion it.”

“Ah! It is your own design! How fascinating!”

“My toe, sir.”

“What? Oh! Oh, I’m sorry.”

“And your mask, Duke?”

“What? Oh, ah, some old family thing. Do you like it? Does it please you? There is a companion one for a lady. I would be honoured if you would accept it with my compliments.”

“I could not possibly, sir. I’m sure your family would object. Thank you, nevertheless.”

“But it is nothing! That is, it is very — it is, I should say, regarded as most elegant and graceful, the one for a lady, I mean, but it is entirely mine to gift. It would be an honour!”

The Doctor paused, as though considering this offer. Then she said, “And an even greater one for me, sir. However, I already possess the mask which you see and have admired, and I find I can only wear one at a time.”

“But…”

However, with that it was time for the two to separate, and the Doctor returned to my side.

“Are you getting all this, Oelph?” she asked, as we caught our breath and executed the marking-time steps.

“Mistress?”

“Your partners appear to become mute in your presence and yet you had the look of somebody concentrating on a conversation.”

“I did, mistress?” I asked, feeling my face redden under my mask.

“You did, Oelph.”

“I beg your pardon, mistress.”

“Oh, it’s quite all right, Oelph. I don’t mind. Listen away, with my blessing.”

The music changed again, and it was time for the two rows of dancers to form a circle and then reconstitute themselves in an alternate order. In the circle, the Doctor held my hand firmly but gently. Her hand, which I’d swear squeezed mine just before she let go, felt warm and dry, and the skin smooth.

Before too long I was dancing in the middle of the great ballroom of our Kingdom’s second palace — and arguably its first in opulence — with a smiling, giggling, porcelain-skinned princess from the Half-Hidden Kingdoms in the high, snow-besieged mountains that climb most-way into the sky beyond the savage anarchy of Tassasen.

Her cloud-white skin was tattooed on eyelid and temple, and pierced with jewelled studs at her nostrils and the septum between nose and upper lip. She was short but curvaceous, dressed in a highly ornamented and colourful version of the booted, straight-skirted fashion of her people. She spoke little Imperial and no Haspidian, and her knowledge of the dance steps was somewhat fragmentary. Still she contrived to be an enchanting dancing partner, and I confess that I caught little of what passed between the Doctor and the King, noting only that the Doctor looked very tall and graceful and correct while the King seemed most animated and merry, even if his steps were not as fluent as they would normally have been (the Doctor had strapped his ankle up especially tightly that afternoon, knowing that he would be certain to take part in the dancing). Both wore smiles beneath their half-masks.

The music swelled and rolled over us, the grand people and beautiful masks and costumes surged and eddied about us, and we, resplendent in our finery, were the bright focus of it all. The Doctor moved and swayed at my side and occasionally I caught a hint of her perfume, which was one that I was never able to identify and cannot ever recall seeing her apply. It was an astonishing scent. It reminded me at once of burned leaves and sea spray, of newly turned earth and of seasonal flowers in bloom. There was, too, something tenebrous and intense and sensual about the scent, something sweet and sharp at the same time, at once lithe and full-bodied and utterly enigmatic.

In later years, when the Doctor was long gone from us and even her most manifest features were becoming difficult to recall with perfect clarity, I would, in diverse moments of private intimacy, catch a hint of that same odour, but the encounter would always prove fleeting.

I freely confess that on such occasions the recollection of that long-ago night, the magnificent ballroom, the splendid profusion of the dancers and the breath-arresting presence of the Doctor seemed like a capstan of ache and longing attached by the ropes of memory to my heart, squeezing and tightening and compressing it until it seemed inevitable that it must be burst asunder.

Engulfed in that riotous storm of the senses, by eye and ear and nose beset, I was at once terrified and exhilarated, and experienced that strange, half-elatory, half-fatalistic alloy of emotions that leads one to feel that if one died at that precise moment, suddenly and painlessly (indeed ceased to be rather than went through the process of dying at all), then it would somehow be a blessed and culminatory thing.

“The King seems happy, mistress,” I observed as we stood side by side again.

“Yes. But he is starting to limp,” the Doctor said, and sent the briefest of frowns in Duke Quettil’s direction. “This was an unwise choice of dance for a man with an ankle which is still recovering.” I watched the King, but of course he was not dancing at that point. However, I could not help but notice that rather than make the fill-in steps, he was standing still, weight on his good leg, clapping his hands in time instead. “How is your Princess?” the Doctor asked me with a smile.

“Her name is Skoon, I think,” I said, frowning. “Or that may be the name of her homeland. Or her father. I’m not sure.”

“She was introduced as Princess of Wadderan, I believe,” the Doctor told me. “I doubt that Skuin is her name. That is the name of the type of dress she is wearing, a skuin-trel. I imagine she thought you were pointing at that when asking for a name. However, given that she is a female of the Wadderani royal family, her name is probably Gul- something or other.”

“Oh. You know of her people?” This confused me, for the Sequestered or Half-Hidden Kingdoms are some of the most remote and thoroughly land-locked places in the known world.

“I have read about them,” the Doctor said urbanely, before being pulled into the centre to dance with the tall Trosilian Prince. I was paired with his sister. A lanky, generally ungainly and rather plain woman, she nevertheless danced well enough and seemed quite as merry as the King. She was happy to engage me in conversation, though she did seem under the impression that I was a nobleman of some distinction, an illusion which I was probably rather too slow to dispel.

“Vosill, you look wonderful,” I heard the King tell the Doctor. I saw her head dip a little and she murmured something back to him which I could not hear. I experienced a pang of jealousy that turned for an instant to wild fear when I realised who it was I was feeling jealous of. Providence, our own dear King!

The dance went on. We met with the Duke and Duchess of Keitz, then formed a circle once more — the Doctor’s hand was as firm and warm and dry as before — and then took up again with our earlier eightsome. I was breathing hard by this time and did not wonder that people the age of Duke Walen usually sat out this sort of dance. Especially when one was masked, it was a long, hot and tiring business.

Duke Quettil danced with the Doctor in frosty silence. Young Ulresile fairly ran into the middle of our group to meet the Doctor and continued in his attempt to press some portion of his family’s equity upon her, while she parried each suggestion as neatly as it was made awkwardly.

Finally (and thankfully, for my feet were becoming quite sore in my new dress shoes and I was in some need of relieving myself) we shared a set with Lady Ulier and Guard Commander Adlain.

“Tell me, Doctor,” Adlain said as they danced together. “What is a… gahan?”

“I’m not sure. Do you mean a gaan?”

“Of course, you pronounce it so much better than I. Yes. A gaan.”

“It is the title of an officer in the Drezeni civil command. In Haspidus, or in Imperial terms, it would roughly correspond to a town master or burghead, though without the military authority and with an additional expectation that the man or woman would be capable of representing Drezen at junior consular level when abroad.”

“Most illuminating.”

“Why do you ask, sir?”

“Oh, I read a report recently from one of our ambassadors… from Cuskery, I think, which mentioned the word as though it was some sort of rank but without including any explanation. I intended to ask one of our diplomatic people but it must have slipped my mind. Seeing you and thinking of Drezen obviously secured it again.”

“I see,” the Doctor said. There was more passed between them, but then Lady Ulier, Duke Ulresile’s sister, spoke to me.

“My brother seemed most fixed upon your lady physician,” she said. Lady Ulier was a few years older than either myself or her brother, with the same narrow-pinched and sallow look as he, though her dark eyes were bright and her brown hair lustrous. Her voice was somewhat strident and abrasive even when pitched low, however.

“Yes,” I said. I could think of little else.

“Yes. I imagine he seeks a physician for our family, which is of course of the finest quality. Our own midwife grows old. Perhaps the lady physician will provide a suitable replacement when the King grows tired of her, should we think her suitable and sufficiently trustworthy.”

“With the greatest respect, ma’am, I think that would demean her talents.”

The lady looked down her long nose at me. “Do you, indeed! Well, I think not. And you perjure yourself, sir, for the greatest respect you could have accorded me would have been to have said nothing to contradict what I had just said.”

“I beg your pardon, ma’am. It was simply that I could not bear to see so noble and fair a lady so deceived regarding the abilities of Doctor Vosill.”

“Yes. And you are…?”

“Oelph, my lady. It is my honour to have been the Doctor’s assistant throughout the time she has treated our good King.”

“And your family?”

“Is no more, my lady. My parents were of the Koetic persuasion and perished when the Imperial regiment of our late King sacked the city of Derla. I was a baby in swaddling at the time. An officer took pity on me when he might as well have thrown me on to a fire and brought me back to Haspidus. I was raised amongst the orphans of officers, a loyal and faithful servant of the crown.”

The lady looked at me with some horror. In a strangled voice she said, “And you wish to teach me the proprieties of who should serve our family?” She laughed in such a way that the shriek produced surely convinced most of those surrounding us that I had just stamped upon her toe, then for the rest of the set she kept her nose angled as though trying to balance a marble-fruit upon its tip.

The music had stopped. We all bowed to each other and the King, hobbling a little, was surrounded by dukes and princes all of whom seemed desperately anxious to talk to him. The little Wadderan princess, whose name I had established was Gul-Aplit, gave me a polite wave as a forbidding-looking chaperone appeared at her side and escorted her away. “Are you all right, Oelph?” the Doctor asked.

“I am very well, mistress,” I told her. “A little warm.”

“Let’s get something to drink and then step outside. What do you say?”

“I’d say that was a very good idea, mistress, if not two.”

We collected two tall goblets of some form of aromatic punch which we were assured by the servants was weak in alcohol and then, with our masks off at last — and following a brief period to obey the call of nature — we made our way out on to the balcony which ran round the outside of the ballroom, joining a good hundred or so others taking the fragrant night air.

It was a dark night and would be long. Seigen had almost joined Xamis at sundown that evening and for a good quarter of the wholeday there would be only the moons to light the sky. Foy and Iparine were our lanterns that evening, their bluey-grey luminescence filled out along the balcony’s tiles and the terraces of garden, fountain and hedge by glowing paper lamps, cressets of oilwood and scented pole-torches.

Duke and Duchess Ormin and their party approached us on the balcony, their way lit for them by dwarves carrying short poles, on the tip of which were large spheres of clear glass containing what looked like millions of soft and tiny sparks. As these curious apparitions came closer we saw that the globes contained hundreds and hundreds of glowflies, all milling and darting about in their strange confinement. They spread little light, but much amazement and delight. The Duke exchanged nods with the Doctor, though the Duchess did not deign to acknowledge us.

“Did I hear you telling the very young but very grand Lady Ulier your life history, Oelph?” the Doctor asked, sipping at her goblet as we strolled.

“I mentioned something about my upbringing, mistress. It may have been a mistake. She cannot think better of either of us for it.”

“From the impression, not to mention the looks I got, I do not think she could think much less of me, but I’m sorry if she finds your orphanhood in some way reprehensible.”

“That and the fact that my parents were Koetics.”

“Well, one must allow for the prejudices of nobles. Your forebears professed themselves not only republican, but so god-fearing they had neither dread nor respect left for any worldly authority.”

“Theirs was a sadly mistaken creed, mistress, and I am not proud to be associated with it, though I honour my parents’ memory as any child must.”

The Doctor looked at me. “You do not resent what happened to them?”

“To the extent that I resent their suppression as a people who preached forgiveness rather than violence, I condemn the Empire. For the fact that I was recognised as an innocent and rescued, I thank Providence that I was discovered by a Haspidian officer who acted under the more humane orders of our good King’s father.

“But I never knew my parents, mistress, and I have never met anybody who knew them, and their faith is meaningless to me. And the Empire, whose very existence might have fuelled an urge for vengeance on my part, is gone, brought down by the fire which fell from the sky. One unchallengeably mighty force brought down by an even greater one.” I looked at her then, and felt, from the expression in her eyes, that we were talking and not just behaving as equals. “Resentment, mistress? What is the point of feeling that?”

She took my hand in hers for a moment then, and squeezed it rather as she had during the dance, and after that she put her arm through mine, an action that had fallen into disuse and even disrepute within polite society and which occasioned not a few looks. To my own surprise I felt honoured rather than embarrassed. It was a gesture of friendliness rather than anything else, but it was a gesture of closeness and comfort, and I felt just then that I was the most favoured man in all the palace, regardless of birth, title, rank or circumstance.

“Ah! I am murdered! Murdered! Help me! Help me! Murdered!”

The voice rang out across the balcony. Everybody stopped as though frozen into statues, then looked round at a tall door leading from one of the smaller rooms next to the ballroom as it opened further and a half-clothed figure fell slowly out of it into the light, gripping the pale gold curtains that fluted back inside, where thin, girlish screams began to sound.

The man, dressed only in a white shirt, gradually rolled over so that his face pointed towards the moons. The pure white shirt seemed to glow in the moonlight. High on his chest near one shoulder there was a bright, vividly red mark, like a freshly picked blossom. The man’s collapse to the stones of the balcony was accomplished with a sort of idle grace, until his violent grip on the curtains and his weight overcame their supports and they gave way.

With that, he slumped quickly to the ground and the curtains came billowing, folding down upon him, like syrup on to the body of a struggling insect, entirely covering his round shape so that, while the screams from the room still sounded and everybody still stood where they were, staring, it was almost as though there was no body there at all.

The Doctor moved first, dropping her goblet on to the balcony with a crash and running towards the tall, slowly swinging door.

It was a moment or two longer before I could break the spell that had descended upon me, but eventually I was able to follow the Doctor — through a crowd of servants most of whom suddenly and to my confusion seemed to be carrying swords — to where the Doctor was already kneeling, throwing back the folds of curtain, burrowing down to where the twitching, bleeding form of Duke Walen lay dying.