He smiles, and this time it’s a sad sort of smile. ‘I won’t sleep now. Don’t let it concern you. After the next council, I suppose I’ll have time to sleep all I want.’

No idea what the fellow’s talking about. ‘Mm-hm?’ I say. Then I remember that the prince is heading to Cahercorcan to be hand-fasted right after the next council. ‘Be busy, won’t you? Wedding and all?’ Wouldn’t that be the sort of time a nobleman needed his body servant most?

He waits so long I think he’s not going to answer. Then he says, quiet-like, ‘I won’t be there for the wedding. I’m planning to move on.’

From the way he speaks, I know he’s sad about this. Which makes two of them, him and the prince both. Sad old place. ‘That’s a change,’ I say. Hasn’t he been with Prince Oran since the two of them were lads? Where would a fellow like him go? Only done the one job all his life, and you wouldn’t think there’d be much call for body servants. But what would I know? ‘Got plans?’

Seems to me night time and firelight bring out things folk wouldn’t be sharing in the day. In here, with the rest of the house asleep, could be we’re the only two people in the world. ‘In fact, no,’ Donagan says, stretching out his legs and folding his arms. ‘Just an empty road ahead, Grim. But it happens sometimes. When you least expect it, everything changes.’

They’ve had a falling-out, that’s plain as the eyes on his face. But it wasn’t Donagan the prince asked us to spy on. ‘Learned that early,’ I say. ‘Soon as you think everything’s going right, soon as you get content, something happens to take it all away.’

Donagan stares at me in the firelight. ‘That’s very bleak,’ he says.

I shrug. ‘Story of my life.’

‘You mean the cottage burning? That must have been a hard loss after all the work you put into it.’

‘Can’t say I was happy to see it go up. Though if Branoc hadn’t come back to do his dirty work, we wouldn’t have caught the bastard. And a house can be mended easy enough. There’s some things you can’t mend.’ And some things buried too deep to share, even in the quiet of night time by the fire.

‘Mm,’ murmurs Donagan. After a while he says, out of the blue, ‘Did he ask you to question me?’

That wakes me up quick smart. ‘What?’

‘Oran. Did he ask you to talk to me?’

Stick to the story. ‘Don’t know what you mean. We’re here, Blackthorn and me, because our house burned down and the prince was kind enough to offer us room. You know that.’

‘I know it’s the official story, yes.’