“Lysimachus probably wouldn’t have listened at all. More likely, he’d have smacked her across the face. Funny, really. I could unleash violence and death on women and children in Mahec, but I could no more hit a woman than fly in the air; because I’m civilised, I suppose. I guess the difference is between what happens offstage and on. A manager once told me, you can have your hero butcher entire nations in a messenger’s report, but for God’s sake don’t have him hit a woman or a child on stage. You’d lose all sympathy.”