I repeated that piece of information in my head, over and over, hoping it would help confirm some of my suspicions for my night-brother. ‘I did not expect to see anyone from the southern tribes here in Drekenford.’

‘There are plenty of theories about that, I can assure you. Some say he simply wandered out of the forest a few years ago, and into the Eder house.’

That was a possibility I could picture only too well.

‘Once there, their eldest insisted he must stay, that she would marry him. Personally, I’ve never seen the kind of spine in that girl that would “insist” on anything.’

‘It does sound a plausible explanation. He—’

‘Plausible? Plausible? A boy barely tall enough to reach the table wandering through however many hundreds of miles of forest? Alone? Which part of that sounds plausible to you?’

‘Well.’

‘No. I may not subscribe to the belief that their proposed marriage is a secret union between southern tribes and a maligned – frankly forgotten – house with Kettoman roots. Who could think such a union would really threaten the King?’

‘Who indeed.’

‘But it is between those two unlikely extremes that the truth lies.’

For once I was lost for words. This appeared to satisfy Mrs Channock, as if that was her intention all along. The question of Olesca was certainly puzzling – a southerner who, like myself, was so far from home. Was one part of him more comfortable, more accepting of the situation, than the other? Did he, by daylight, long for the nomadic life of a tribesman? Or did his night-brother walk barefoot on the slate flagstones of the Eder kitchen and feel at home?

But, perhaps the most puzzling aspect of it all was the general sense of acceptance the town seemed to hold for a southern tribesman in their midst. The place was so quick to turn against Christophor and I, and yet here was a young man from an entirely different world. Was it simply that he wore clothes of our fashion, combed his hair, and spoke Reikovan without an overbearing accent? Was that enough to accept him as one of our own? Granted, without the self-inflicted bodily deformations, and the immodest traditional clothing, and the unknowable ritualistic celebrations it was easy to forget where the man was from.

‘He is alone,’ Mrs Channock said quietly.

I blinked at the woman. ‘I’m sorry?’

‘It’s clear what you are wrestling with. He is alone. That’s why we have all turned the other cheek. He is alone, and that is not how we think of the southern tribes. We cannot conceive of them as individuals.’

If I was in any doubt that Mrs Channock was a formidable woman, it was no longer in question. I might have taken days, weeks, or perhaps I would have never consciously reached that very conclusion: Olesca was alone. The southern tribes were a mass. A sprawling, uncontainable mass that knew nothing of borders or cities, walls or boundaries, fields or plough. There was no ‘alone’.