Dying, I thought but did not say. The draught had been a strong infusion of thyme and calamint. I had added a drop or two of a tincture made from a particular fungus, a substance I was loath to use except in the most extreme of cases, as it came close to administering a poison. I kept a tiny vial of it in my healer’s bag. I had not expected to be using it. But I’d weighed up the risk against the probability that if I could not get Fann’s labour started again, I would have to cut the baby free or lose both of them anyway. Now we were waiting; waiting for the draught to work.

‘That’s not a drinking song or the like,’ I said. ‘It’s a fine old song about a man who went off to seek his fortune and ended up seeing all kinds of wonders. A song to put heart in a person.’ I could imagine who had suggested it. I could hear his voice among the others. He didn’t sing at home. But we’d sung in Mathuin’s prison, all of us, raising our cracked and broken voices in defiance of the rules, as if pretending to have hope might make that hope reality. We’d sung the night that poor soul died under torture; sung him to his last merciful sleep. Hope. Hope fought hard to stay alive. Even when you thought it was beaten to nothing, burned to ashes, drowned deep, still it flickered away, waiting to be found again.

Fann coughed. Moaned. She’d been lying flat on the bed, but now she was moving about, struggling. ‘Aah,’ she groaned. ‘It hurts! Oh, gods!’ There was a tone in her voice that I recognised. Our chance, our one chance, was almost here.