‘That is no way to speak to your betrothèd.’

‘All my life I’ve been fighting to get into the Circle and you just throw it away! Like it’s nothing! Throw your life to a stupid child like a bauble!’

‘The surprise should improve your music. It has become a bit samey over the last few years.’

‘You!’ She was speechless, and she still wouldn’t sit down. ‘How dare you!’

‘Answer me this first-do you still want to marry me?’

‘But…you’re a loser. You lost.’

Lightning closed his eyes for a second. Swallow continued, ‘You’re going to become mortal. To get older!’

‘So you don’t want me now?’

She hesitated and Lightning continued artlessly, ‘So you were interested in me for my immortality, rather than as a person?’

She looked to the books portrayed in the lush weave of the carpet and the cascades of fruit in the deep wood mouldings on the door jambs. She ground the heel of one hand into her eye. Her red wings opened slightly, pulling her gown tight across her front; she was as flat-chested as a narrow boat. Her face had become lined, and she had plucked her eyebrows into an expression of constant surprise.

Swallow was the best musician of all time, but the Emperor did not need a musician. He didn’t need music to rally the fyrd when everyone agreed Insects must be fought. He didn’t need music for propaganda when he was offering immortality. She hated the fact that the sole determiner of the value of anything was its usefulness in the Insect war. After fifteen years of the same ambitious refrain the pressure had made her diamond inside, but she wasn’t sparkling, however emptily. She was cutting.

‘I want to join the Circle,’ she said. ‘How can you help me now? I am a musician. It’s all I do. Just like an Eszai.’

Lightning leant back, his elbow on the piano’s music stand. ‘Oh, Swallow,’ he said. ‘You never noticed for one second that I really adored you. But now I’m leaving the Circle you suddenly see me. For ten years I have been offering you a place in the Circle through my love and you were too proud to take it. Do you think I can’t tell, after hundreds of years of fending off gold-diggers? You strung me along-with your pride you believed you could make it into the Circle on your own merit and I was your back-up plan. Even if you had become Eszai, you still wouldn’t have married me, because deep down you don’t want to. I was just as wrong to court you, but I didn’t want to admit it, because I thought you were like Martyn-’ He looked momentarily surprised at himself. ‘But you are not. Now you are showing your true colours.’

‘Ha! At least I still have feelings, not like you, always controlled, living in this fucking art gallery; you’re so transparent.’

‘On the contrary, you barely noticed I existed. I wondered what I had to do. If you had wanted Donaise you could have had it. I would have done anything. Now it’s too late.’

She said, ‘You’re always deluding yourself. You with love, Jant with drugs; god knows what the rest of the immortals rely on. In a few years you won’t be able to draw any of your wonderful bows any longer because you’ll be old and weak.’

‘I am sure it will be an interesting experience,’ he said brightly. ‘I never considered what I would look like when I’m forty. Or sixty. Well, now I’m going to find out.’

Swallow couldn’t stand the fact that he was looking on it as an interesting experiment. ‘You’re a fool! And I’ve been looking after your nasty daughter all this time! I wish I’d known!’

‘Be quiet about Cyan. I have just given my life for her. I only regret I didn’t do it earlier, so I could have been with her as she grew up. I should have raised her instead of you.’

Swallow exploded with fresh anger. ‘And now you’re leaving me-where? Your bastard games will have wasted my talent! One day I’ll be just a faded memory to you Eszai-worse still!-an old governor! And you won’t hear my music any more.’

Lightning smiled and glanced away. He reached around with one hand and pressed a couple of keys, twiddling the first bars of a piece of music. Swallow stopped dead. ‘Don’t you dare play my aria.’

Lightning brought his other hand into play and expanded the music to its full glory.

‘Stop it!’

He had turned back to the keyboard. ‘What, this? You make your own immortality with every effortless opera. You are the greatest composer in the world, Swallow. What do you really want? Immortality might not give you what you really want. It didn’t for me. Ask yourself, and be true to yourself. You already have fame. You have recognition. Your music brings a great response and many friends. But you harp on the same old tune of wanting the Circle. You don’t appreciate the magnitude of your achievements, you only see the things you haven’t done.’

‘It isn’t good enough, if I’m still mortal. I don’t want to die.’

‘Everybody dies except San. Eszai just take longer. Why should you be saved?’

‘If I can make music forever, I’ll be happy.’

‘No, Swallow. Immortals are those who prize success and fame over happiness. They gain what little happiness they ever have from success. Their thirst for perfection and fear of being beaten drives them on. I no longer prize immortality in those terms, and neither should you. Learn from my example. Escape. You don’t have to forgo an Eszai’s single-mindedness. I won’t let anything get in my way, even though the obstacle in my path was immortality itself.’

Swallow made a sound of disgust. She pulled off her engagement ring and flung it in rage. It hit the inside of the piano’s upraised lid, dropped onto the strings and we heard it chime.

‘I did love you, Swallow.’

‘Liar!’ she screamed. She turned to me. ‘Jant, you’ll help me, won’t you?’

‘All I can, but I doubt it’ll do any good. It’s up to you, now.’

‘You said I was like a sister!’

‘I can’t change the Castle, Swallow.’

She bowed her head and sighed. ‘I sometimes feel that I’m on the edge of some great truth. I get excited. I start scrawling the notes on the manuscript. I see the glow, the edge of the bright light where genius resides. I can never reach it completely. Maybe my excitement makes it ebb. The intense white light retreats, eludes me. I grow cold. I am left on the shore. No genius breakthrough tonight, just another symphony finished and my eyes are sore. It is happening more and more these days. I am getting older, and I no longer write from the heart. I’m getting older, Jant, and I will lose my genius. I’m still running the race; time is still burning down the bridges to things I could have achieved.’ She burst into frightened tears.

‘None of us can change the Castle,’ I repeated.

‘You immortals only exist because we allow you to,’ she sobbed. ‘If you’re a…barrier to me…I’ll make your life hard in the real world.’

Eleonora cut in, with a voice used to command battles and law courts. ‘Spare us the vulgar threats, Governor Awndyn. There are not even a hundred immortals and you had one more chance to join them than the rest of us. You held out for yet another and lost both. Return to your music. We look forward to your next concert.’

Swallow swept the room with a look of pure hatred, took a step forward, hesitated, turned on her heel and stormed out. Her progress down the passageway was marked by a vase smashing every few metres. A little while later we heard the clop and crunch as her coach departed at a gallop. Silence returned.

Lightning sighed. ‘I’d just had those replaced. The third time.’

I smiled. ‘Well I’m sure you can afford to have them repaired. Or make some new replicas.’

‘I don’t think I’ll bother this time. Time for a new look.’

‘Lightning, are you sure?’

‘Never more so. And you will all have to get used to calling me Saker.’

‘I think people will still call you Lightning,’ Eleonora said. ‘And Lightning, I do want to escape.’