We walked under the shadow of the covered track, trees banked against a low wall on one side, and trees stretching off into the forest proper on the other. Looking for long at the forest made me uncomfortable but I also couldn’t help searching for any signs of the destruction of the wall, and where Christophor had strayed from the track the previous night, when he still rode Tabitha. I saw no evidence of the terrible experience, none of the bloody mess I had woken to that morning. Eventually, I could take no more and sought a distraction.

‘Olesca… he is smaller than I imagine most southern tribesmen to be,’ I said.

‘Have you met many from the tribes, living in the capital?’

‘One or two. But now I think of it, they weren’t particularly tall. All the stories and paintings I’ve seen have big men in them,’ I said. ‘Big men shaking their fists, or charging with a spear, or atop something monstrous. No women.’

She gave that some thought. In the shadows she had a sterner aspect to her – something I’d seen flashes of before, but this was more total, more like the impression I had of her night-sister. The formidable, as far as Christophor was concerned, the formidable Mrs Eder.

‘Those paintings and stories say more about us, than about the tribes,’ she said.

‘And my songs?’

‘They say very little at all, from what I’ve heard.’

‘You wound me, madam,’ I said, smiling. ‘How do you know so much of the tribes?’

‘When he’s not singing, Olesca likes to talk of home.’

‘My night-brother was quite taken with his voice.’

‘But not you,’ she said.

‘Well, I’ve heard more foreign singers than he has.’

We had reached the end of the track, and the trees gave way to two-storey buildings with tall, sloping roofs. The pavements felt a welcome relief.

Rebecca kissed my cheek by way of farewell. Not a cold gesture, but one that I took to reinforce my earlier feeling; this was a line in the sand. Beyond that line, in sight of the Eder house, whatever we felt for each other was secondary. Unwelcome. So I would keep to my side.

‘Look to yourself, Alexsander,’ she said. Her simple, unguarded sincerity was hard to ignore. ‘Don’t let your night-brother dig you both an early grave.’

I glanced at the treeline. ‘Neither of us are much for digging, least not with our hands.’

Christophor wanted to go find her. He knew it would be impossible, a fool’s errand, and one only made in an attempt to ease his own battered conscience. He paced as he thought it through. There were other ways to honour the dead, other means, he decided. The very reason he was sent there in the first place, for instance. She was just a horse. Worse had been inflicted on the men and women of Drekenford. Worse, Christophor thought, but he knew he was lying to us both.