‘Never did sleep much. Once, maybe. Long time ago.’

‘Mm. You need your rest. Working so hard.’

A silence; Grim stared down at his clasped hands. ‘Keeping you awake, am I?’ he said eventually.

I found myself wishing he would shout at me, berate me for my selfishness, point out that with him slaving away on my behalf the least I should do was give him a proper place to sleep. His patience made me angry; it filled me with a guilt I had no room for. Wasn’t this hard enough already, when my own nights were haunted by Mathuin? ‘Might almost be better if you were,’ I found myself saying. ‘My dreams don’t make the best company.’

A grunt was all the response I got. But I was used to him, and I knew it was no dismissal, but an acknowledgement that he understood. Which annoyed me even more – I didn’t need understanding, I didn’t want folk making allowances for me, I just wanted them to go away and leave me alone so I could make quite sure I didn’t forget the only thing that really mattered: making Mathuin pay for his crimes. Getting through the seven years so I could ensure that happened. Not wasting my anger on the folk who came to my door seeking love potions and cures for the pox and poultices for boils in awkward places. Not wasting it on Grim. Saving it for the man who had destroyed my life, and who would keep on doing the same to other folk until I stopped him.

‘Thing is,’ said Grim, and his voice was just above a whisper, ‘I don’t do so well on my own. At night. Day’s all right, sun shining, work to do, and you’re in and out of the house.’

I said nothing. I heard how hard it was for him to admit this.

‘Loneliest place in the world, sometimes, that place of Mathuin’s,’ Grim said. ‘Even with the noise, the screaming, Frog Spawn going on and on with his list, and Slammer . . . A fellow could be in there, with all that around him, and feel like he was at the bottom of a well, in the deep of a pit, somewhere nobody would ever find him. Night time, worse. Even when Frog Spawn was quiet, even when the guards were off sleeping, I could hear it. See it. Everything. All the things, from the first day, they never went away. Not for a single heartbeat.’

I nodded, though Grim was not looking at me, but into the fire. I didn’t remind him that we were out now, and safe, and that those things were gone. ‘You could have killed Slammer or Tiny,’ I said. ‘Any time they had you out of your cell, you could have done it in a moment.’