And there was another complication. The baker, Branoc, whom we’d helped bring to justice after he kidnapped and abused a young woman, was serving out his sentence as a bondsman to the king. He would be living in the household at Cahercorcan. I doubted Grim’s capacity to be so close to the man without killing him.

“So, you going to ask him?”

“You mean Conmael?”

“Mm-hm. I know you don’t much like the fellow. Me neither. But he’s had his uses. And he did save your life.”

I hesitated. If Grim was right, and the promise had been only to stay in Dalriada, then going to Cahercorcan would not be breaking my vow. On the other hand, if Conmael had bound me to stay at Winterfalls, then heading north would put another year onto the term of our agreement and lose me one of my four chances. That was a sacrifice I was not prepared to make.

“Brew?” asked Grim. “Ready when you get back.”

“What makes you think Conmael will be there when I need him?”

“Came when I needed him, didn’t he? The day you took it into your head to rush off south on your own.”

There was no arguing with that. I had believed a lie that day, and I’d let anger guide me, not common sense. Although there were times—more than a few of them—when I’d have preferred my own company to Grim’s, there was no doubt that he had the ability to steady me, and that was not something to be lightly set aside. “I’ll look. But he won’t be there.”

• • •

The herbs had been an excuse to get rid of Donagan; I had no immediate need to gather anything. I went into Dreamer’s Wood without my basket and knife, and without any real expectation that Conmael would make an appearance. Dog came with me, pattering along behind as I walked down the pathway toward the shadowy, fern-fringed pool that lay within the woodland. She had not yet learned the way of being a creature, and did not venture far from the path in pursuit of interesting smells or rustlings in the grass. I felt for her, though as a woman she had done Lady Flidais a great wrong. If Flidais’s own experience was anything to go by, Ciar still had her human understanding while trapped in her canine body. No wonder she was sometimes ill-tempered. Who would look after her if we went to court?

I reached the strip of pebbly shore where, last autumn, I had witnessed a sudden death and a strange transformation and had not fully understood either. One thing I had learned from that experience—I would never dip so much as a single toe in the waters of Dreamer’s Pool. I might frequently despise my wretched, inadequate self, but I far preferred this body to that of, say, a dragonfly or trout. In Dreamer’s Pool things were apt to change, and not always in the way one would wish.