Sooner or later Conmael would catch up with me, ask me why I’d broken my word. Perhaps make good his threat to throw me back in Mathuin’s lockup, though I wondered, now, if he would really do that. Supercilious meddler that he was, he did appear to have my welfare at heart. The mood I was in, I hardly cared anyway. His instructions were impossible. Use my talents for good and say yes to any request for help; that had made a sort of sense when he’d first set it all out. But when one of the folk who’d asked for help would not stand up against the man who’d betrayed her trust – indeed, planned to marry him – and the other was that very man, courteous and charming on the outside, a cold-hearted abuser of women underneath, how could I do as Conmael wished? I could not help Flidais if she was not prepared to help herself. As for Oran, he was a lying rat, and I’d rather walk on hot coals than do a thing more for him.

I’d promised myself I wouldn’t look back. But as I hitched my bag onto my shoulders again, I caught a glimpse of the view. This hill overlooked grazing fields, and beyond them, a mile or two to the north-east, lay an expanse of water, grey under the overcast sky, with a settlement straggling along its edge. Silverlake, where we’d confronted Branoc in his bakery. Silverlake, where Ness was still lodging with the family who’d taken her in. Where Emer, who might be a fine healer one day, still stayed by her friend’s side.

South. Mathuin. Justice, I told myself, wanting to turn away, wanting to head on south, but hesitating all the same. Mathuin was an abuser of women, whose callous, unthinking assaults had left a trail of broken lives behind him. Branoc’s crime was the same, and even if he’d had only one victim, her hurt was no less for that. I was going south to make Mathuin face up to his ill deeds. A grand mission, far grander than sorting out a lying prince’s tangled betrothal. But I owed it to Ness to visit her one last time before I left, to acknowledge her strength, to offer her . . . what? Wise advice? There wasn’t much wisdom in me right now. I was full up with Mathuin and my anger. But I could at least sit down with Ness and listen. Silverlake was just over there, not far at all. There would be time.