“Whatever’s troubling you, you ought to let it go. It seems not to be worth keeping.”

“Certainly. It’s just as easy as you say. I shall begin anew and afresh tomorrow, and all will be right with the world.” As Julian said this, Matthew got a glimpse of intense and harrowing fire in the other man’s eyes, but it quickly flamed away. Left in its place was the smoke of sadness.

“Well,” Matthew said, “I’m going back to bed. If you please, refrain from waking me again with your shouts.”

“You weren’t sleeping. Just like me … trying to grip on what we have to do tomorrow. I mean … today.”

“All the same, I’m—”

“I was born not far from here,” said Julian in a wan, distant voice. “On a street, not far from here.”

“On a street? I thought you were—”

“Who I became. What I became,” he corrected. “Born on a street not far from here.”

Matthew didn’t move nor say anything. After a moment he set his lantern down on a sidetable. There was more to come from the man who had confided Mother Deare’s increasing insanity to Matthew, and who in the end had killed her.

“Aren’t you going back to bed?” Julian asked, the acidity returned to his speech.

“No,” Matthew answered. “I’m going to sit in that chair for a while.” He eased into it and waited.

“What are you waiting for? A bedtime story?”

“I’m waiting for the truth,” said Matthew. “Which can be as good for the soul as a solitary walk in the snow.”

Again there was that small solemn laugh, but this time delivered not quite so harshly.

“Which street?” Matthew prompted, after another long silence.

Julian stood without response. Then he placed his forehead against the cold glass, beyond which the whirlwinds blew. “Not far from here.” His voice was once more distant and haunted. “I could see it yesterday morning from this window. Oh … it’s not near enough to this inn where the guests would walk. It is a low street. But I could see it, all the same. I always see it.”

“Something happened there?”

“Something,” Julian replied. He once more drew a long breath and let it out. Before his face a ghost bloomed. “I committed my first murder on that street,” he said. “I killed a little boy.”

Adderlane, Matthew thought. The dead child in the tower, and the mother’s reaction of horror.

“Does that shock you?” Julian asked, his face still against the glass. “Does that make you think I am among the most vile of men?”

“I don’t know the story,” Matthew said.

“The story. You say that as if it were something that made sense. Something that had a beginning and an end. It did not and does not. I killed a child on that street, and … he did not deserve such a death.”

“Does any child?”