I left my coach and followed the estate wall in the dark, until I came to the tradesmen’s little arched entrance. I hurried through and across the soaking lawns. I passed the grand staircase and instead knocked on the door of the kitchens in the basement.

Lightning’s steward brought me in and gave me supper. As well as his white apron, he wore a black crepe armband. He gathered a candelabra from the dresser and took a taper from the stove, talking all the while. He bent close to light the candles and whispered, ‘M’lord scares us. He sits alone for days, no meals, no sleep. He doesn’t bother to open the curtains and we don’t dare light the lamps in Main. Doctor, he’s wound up in himself and the manor go hang. Thought it best to warn you.’

He guided me, up out of the Covey cellars and through the silent, unlit palace. I think even you would find it discouraging, the building so majestic I felt it extending on both sides of me as we ascended to the main floor. The steward pressed on, past the drawing rooms.

Mourning cloths covered all the statues in the niches, reducing them to featureless, barely human shapes. The portraits had been turned to the wall; their blank backs faced us. I wondered at them, when there had never been any changes in your father’s house before; now I believe he wanted to rid himself of the mute, accusing glare of his ancestors.

The rooms leading off from the corridor were in impermeable darkness, but when light from the candelabra flickered in I glimpsed the furniture and objects of virtu standing in shades of grey. Dust sheets had been thrown over them, as when the servants expect Lightning to be absent for years on business. The chandeliers hung in thick wraps. Black linen masked the deep-framed mirror in the salon. The great gold clock had been deliberately stopped.

The ceilings may have been painted by the world’s greatest masters, but we walked past like thieves without looking up. A glimmer of candlelight shone under the door to the dining hall. The steward hesitated and looked at me anxiously. I nodded to reassure him; he gave me the candelabra and showed me through, then bowed and made a hasty retreat.

Lightning sat at the very end of the long table, halfway down the hall. He was leaning forward with his head down, resting in the crook of his arm. His reflection was blurred in the polished marble.

He was not aware of my presence. He picked an orange desultorily out of a bowl with his free hand and rolled it down the table without looking up. It rolled through the small gap between the legs of the silver centrepiece, out the other side and on for another five metres until it dropped off the end of the table beside me.

I put the candelabra down but Lightning did not acknowledge me. He picked another orange and sent it trundling straight down the middle of the table, through the centrepiece.

He was wearing a silk dressing gown and, over it, a very dirty and bloodstained Cathee plaid. He had wound it around his waist and over one shoulder with an automatic gesture from back when he used to wear a toga.

The rear of the hall was invisible in the gloom. I looked past Lightning, and at the edge of the darkness stood his grand piano, wreathed in paper music. Its keys were smeared thickly with dried blood.

The centrepiece was the same then as now, the small statue of a girl reclining on a couch. Lightning rolled another orange between its legs with an accuracy that was both considerable talent and long, long practice. The orange fell off the end of the table and joined several others on the carpet.

‘Talk to me,’ I said, but the room was so sombre it came out as a murmur. I pulled up a chair and sat down. His breath misted the table top. I touched his arm. ‘Come on, Saker. Speak to me.’

‘That chair…is two hundred years old.’

‘I’m not going to break your chair.’

He said nothing else.

‘What happened?’

‘I was married…’

‘I can see that.’

‘I was…’

‘Saker…’

‘…Married.’

‘I really think-’

‘Do you really? Leave me, Ella, please.’

He was still looking away from me. I put my hand to his cheek and turned his head. He complied, though his eyes were blank.

I said, ‘I’m-’

‘Going to leave me alone?’

‘Saker, please tell me the matter.’

‘Savory was killed. I tried to shoot the man but I…I missed my shot…I missed.’

‘It’s been three months,’ I said gently.

‘Three months is nothing. Nothing.’

‘Long enough for Challengers to prick up their ears.’

‘Challengers,’ Lightning sighed. ‘How you worry me. My heart is torn from my body and I’ll never heal. Ever. No matter how long I live. I weep every day. Savory was real, she was strong. In an ugly, unworthy world I had seen a hundred thousand and found just one to love…And everything I’d been through seemed worth it.’

His washed-out voice continued ‘…When I close my eyes I see images of her. Smiling in the village. Shooting at the butts. My mind flicks through still pictures shockingly quickly, as if I’m constantly waking from sleep…It seems odd that I was really in Cathee.’

‘Yes.’

‘How could Savory have come from among such a people? They…I should…well, in a hundred years the birds will have eaten them every one…’

For all my fourteen centuries I hadn’t lived long enough to know what to say. I tried, ‘You’re missed at the Castle.’

‘Already?’ He looked away abjectly. ‘I feel that if just one more thing goes wrong, everything will fall apart. Just one tiny thing and I’ll go mad. There were hundreds of things I should have told her and never had the time.’

‘I’m sure she already knew. Sentiments sound crude when voiced, precious when understood in silence.’

‘Oh, Ella. She was perfect, and I’m such a fool.’

‘You are no fool.’

‘Maybe I have been…but now I have some of her blood in me. I can carry it for the rest of immortality.’ He began to stroke his palm.

‘Let me see your cut.’

He extended his hand to me and opened it. I saw the wound shining, encrusted with dried blood. He had kept it open to the white fan of bone.

So, Cyan, you must see Lightning as a person, not just as your father. There is no point in thinking about death because no amount of thinking will arrive at an answer. He had to return to the Castle. He still has not properly recovered from Savory but the Circle needs him. The Kingdom of Awia needs him, too; who’s to say that without Lightning’s generosity and sense of order their aristocracy wouldn’t have dissolved into something akin to the pack of wolves who run Morenzia.

Cyan, I must go now. I have been writing this letter in between giving orders to prepare for tomorrow’s advance. I apologise for my deteriorating handwriting: it is about four a.m.

The Eszai and soldiers will be exhausted for days after this-I have seen men in full armour come in off the battlefield and sleep where they fall. For twenty-four hours straight they’re even oblivious to the cries of the wounded and nothing rouses them except extreme physical danger. So, Cyan, if nothing seems to be happening directly the dam gates open, and if Jant doesn’t visit you, be patient.

I shall give this letter to him now and go to check the preparations in the hospital.

Yours with love,

Rayne

I collected the letter from Rayne with a stack of last-minute dispatches. The rest I gave to my couriers to deliver.

Rayne’s scale of organisation was incredible, and only one part of the preparations heaving the town into action. She had called all her surgeons and doctors drafted with the rest of the fyrd and given them their chain of command. Anyone else in the fyrd who had medical knowledge-first-aiders and nurses-reported to the doctors.

She was preparing to take over the hall as well as the hospital and tavern, because as soon as San is out of the hall tomorrow morning it will be the overspill for intensive care. The medical supplies had been divided into each site and guards kept a sharp eye on them.