We ate our meal hunched over the fire. The wettest items of clothing we draped over sticks and bushes. The rest we wore, along with the blankets. My joints ached. I longed for a hot bath. But, fey as he was, Conmael wasn’t the kind of being who could be summoned when you wanted him and asked for three wishes. More likely he’d be the one doing the summoning.

About the meal, the less said the better.

‘It’s hot,’ I said, curling my fingers around the cup. ‘That’s something.’

‘Mm-hm.’ Grim had almost finished his share. He was a big man, and always hungry. It made me wonder how he’d managed in that place, where we’d learned to be grateful for watery gruel. How he’d stayed so strong. Strong enough to get three of us out, and then himself.

‘Be good if we don’t need to stop too much from here on,’ I said. ‘We must have enough coppers now to buy our food if we can’t catch it along the way.’

‘Mm-hm.’ A silence. Then, ‘We’d be wanting to keep some set by,’ Grim said, staring into the fire.

This statement bothered me for several reasons. ‘Why do you say that?’ I asked.

‘We’ll be needing things when we get there. You’ll want healers’ supplies. And a lot more, if this cottage is in a bad state of repair. Enough to get us on our feet.’

That this made good sense didn’t make it any less troubling. It wasn’t just his easy use of ‘we’. It was the assumption that the two of us might have some kind of life together after we reached Winterfalls. The implication that, in some capacity, Grim would be staying. I thought of things I could say, brutally true things, and discarded them one by one. He’d asked me for help, that night in the woods. He’d said he had nowhere else to go. If I didn’t want seven years to become eight, I had to be careful.

‘That makes it all the more important to get on quickly,’ I said. ‘If Conmael thinks I can set up as a healer at Winterfalls, then I suppose I can, one way or another. Maybe this prince what’s-his-name will dispense some largesse. Though that’s doubtful. I imagine there’s a court physician for him and his nobles, and my job will be tending to the folk the prince’s healer thinks himself too good for.’

Grim gave me a look, but said nothing.

‘What?’ I snapped.

‘Got a low opinion of yourself.’

‘Did I say that?’

‘Didn’t have to.’ He drew breath. ‘You don’t want to start believing those things, you know. What they used to say, in that place. The names. The . . .’

I waited.