Nothing! Just Snorri’s bulk, seated beside me, knees drawn up. The fire had fallen to red embers. The circus folk had gone to their beds, taking their sorrow with them. No sound but for the whirr and chirp of insects. My heart’s pounding slowed. My head continued to ache as if it were cracked through, but the blame for that lay with a quart of wine gulped down in the heat of the day.

“It’s a thing to make the world weep, the loss of a baby.” Snorri’s rumble was almost too deep to make sense of. “In Asgard Odin sees it and his unblinking eye blinks.”

I thought it best not to mention that technically a one-eyed god can only wink. “All deaths are sad.” It seemed like a good thing to say.

“Most of what a man is has been written by the time his beard starts to prickle. A babe is made of maybes. There are few crimes worse than the ending of something before its time.”

Once more I bit my tongue and made no complaint that this was exactly what he had accomplished at the dancers’ wagon earlier. It wasn’t tact that held me silent so much as the desire not to get my nose broken yet again. “I suppose some sorrows can only truly touch a parent.” I’d heard that somewhere. I think perhaps Cousin Serah had said it at her little brother’s funeral. I recall all the grey heads nodding and exchanging words about her. She probably fished it from a book. Even at fourteen she was scheming for Grandmother’s approval. And her throne.

“When you become a father, it changes you.” Snorri spoke towards the fire’s glow. “You see the world in new ways. Those who are not changed were not properly men to begin with.”

I wondered if he was drunk. That’s when I tend to speak profundities to the night. Then I remembered that Snorri was a father. I couldn’t picture it. Wee ones bouncing on his knee. Tiny hands tugging at his battle braids. Even so, I understood his mood better now I could guess what he might see amongst the embers. Not this unborn child, but his own children, fleeing horrors in the snows. The thing that drew him north against all sense.

“Why are you still here?” I asked him.

“Why are you?”

“I passed out.” Mild exasperation coloured my voice. “I’m not sitting vigil! In fact, now that I’m awake I’ll find a better place to sleep.” Perhaps one with more interesting contours and a snub nose. I stood, aching along my side, and stamped to get some life back into my legs.

“Can’t you feel it?” he said as I turned to go.

“No.” But I could. Something wrong. A sense of brokenness. “No, I can’t.” Even so, I didn’t step away.

With one breath the insects ceased their chorus. A deep noise reached me, rumbling up through the soles of my feet, still bare. “Ah hell.” My hands trembled, with the customary terror of the unknown, but also with something new, as if they were full of fractured light.