‘But why milk?’

The Father shrugged. ‘Perhaps because it is cheap?’

‘Do you think it’s possible, Father?’

‘What’s that?’

I read part of the inscription on the gravestone: ‘“Rightly dividing the word of truth”?’

‘A worthy goal, the truth. The truth of ourselves, of our lives, under God. What can we do but work towards that truth?’

I stared at those words. At one word in particular. I was about to ask again, as the good Father had not really answered my question, when I realised he had left to speak to others of his flock.

‘Dividing,’ I said. Is that what Christophor and I had been doing? Were we closer to the truth for it? Our lives were divided, but then much of our efforts were to lessen that – to live as harmoniously as possible. Coming to Drekenford had made that more difficult than ever. I felt no closer to any truth.

But I still worked my way towards the Eder house, and the boy I believed to be a witch.

*

I walked the track that was so familiar to my night-brother. Like the feeling of waking with a pistol in hand, I wondered how often, between us, we had walked it. In some ways it was a dizzying day of the new and the repeated. I felt pulled in both directions.

Christophor’s coat was heavy, weighed down by the tools of his trade, but it was warm. As I climbed that side of the valley I was caught between the cold air and my own body heat, parts of me sweating while others were chilled to numbing. As the view came clear to the valley slopes opposite, and the town between, I couldn’t help but look. The streets were clearly busy, though it was hard to pick out anything specific from the masses – a flash of colour here, a shape there. The fort, however, was silent, empty even. Perhaps it was too far away to see the movement of sentries or the flicker of a cooking fire. But it felt lifeless. The way only empty buildings can.

It wasn’t alone in that.

I approached the house as if it were a dangerous animal I didn’t want to spook. I skirted the treeline to the garden, to the greenhouse and the back door. In every window, without exception, a candle burned. Even so, I had the strong impression there was no one inside. No sound came from the house. No movement. I tried the back door, but it was locked. In desperation, I tried the side door and even the front. There, I took Christophor’s pistol by the barrel and readied myself in front of one of the windows. I had never done anything of that sort. In fact, it wasn’t until that moment that I realised how sheltered and simple my life had been. I had witnessed common room brawls, cut purses at work, and the like; and in the same way, I’d witnessed the darker acts of my night-brother. But I was the witness, at a remove, not the perpetrator. Part of me doubted I could do it.