Can’t ask. The man’s still upset, though at least he’s stopped weeping. Walking along beside me and Ripple, wrapped up in his own thoughts. Points the way from time to time, knows exactly where he’s going. I was expecting to be leading him, but it’s the other way round.

When I got back to the hut he was waiting for me on the steps. Door was shut on the sad inside of the little house. He’d said his goodbyes to the dead. No sign of that rag of embroidery. He got up and came with me, and he didn’t say a word about Tóla or what might happen when we got there. Only asked about the baby down at Longwater, if it had been born safely, if the woman was all right, if Blackthorn was all right. I said yes to all three and thanked him for waiting. He just nodded. When I add it up, seems to me he might know Fann and Ross and a few of those other folk down there. Not the youngest, but the ones around my age or Blackthorn’s or older. I don’t ask. Don’t want to set him off again.

But while we’re walking, something’s bothering me. Thing is, Bardán’s a lot like me. He’s a man carrying a weight from the past, a burden that’s sucking the life out of him, making him angry and crazy and sad. That was me, not so long ago. Me before I met Blackthorn. Me before I went to Bann and let some of that madness out before it ate me up. If those monks at St Olcan’s hadn’t helped me, I’d still be that way. But they did help. Still got that dark stuff inside me, doesn’t go away so easy, but the pieces of me have started to fit back together. Started to mend. Bardán’s far from mending. And with Tóla and Gormán hanging over him with orders and rules and threats, he’s going to stay broken a long while. Seems like it might be my job to help him. Reach out a hand to him the way Brother Fergal and Brother Ríordán and the others did to me. See him as a whole man, a real man the way Blackthorn did when she kept me from going mad in the lockup. When she invited me to her campfire. When she pulled me back from the brink. Like the good Samaritan, from the Bible. Brother Galen read me that story long ago. You don’t walk on past. Doesn’t matter if I believe in God anymore. Still got to do the right thing. Only, not so easy, because Blackthorn needs me too. I saw that before. She wasn’t only tired out from what she had to do today, she was sad deep down.