He set a cup beside me. “I’ll be off, then.”

“Stay,” I said. “If you want.” And, after a bit, “She asked me about happy endings. The kind you get in tales. Whether I believed in them. Whether they could happen in real life.”

“Mm-hm.” Grim filled a cup for himself, sat down, passed a platter of bread and honey. “Upset you.”

“I’ll live. I just hope she’s done with her efforts to get something out of me that isn’t there in the first place.”

“Eat,” suggested Grim. “It’ll make you feel better.” So I did, and it did. And eventually, when we had made considerable progress on the bread and honey, he said, “About happy endings. Folk like a story to finish well. Doesn’t matter if that’s true to life or not. Helps to hear about folk being content. About good folk getting what they deserve. While you’re listening you can believe, for a bit, that you’re good too. Worth a happy ending.”

I dashed away a sudden treacherous tear. “You’re saying they do only exist in stories.”

“Thing is, the story’s like a different world. While you’re in it, anything can happen. The stupid get wise, the ugly get handsome, the poor find pots of gold, the swineherd marries the lady of the house. Only, as soon as the tale’s over, that’s all gone. You’re back in this world. And you’re still poor or stupid or ugly or all three, and folk like Mathuin are still getting away with murder.”

“You knew I was thinking about him.”

“Not hard to guess.”

I wondered if Grim thought he was stupid or ugly or both, but I didn’t ask him. “You once said a person has to have hope or it’s not worth going on,” I said. “But maybe hope’s the same as believing in happy endings.”

“Job to do,” Grim said succinctly. “Duty. Enough to make it worth going on.”

“Justice. The same.”

“Vengeance?”

“On its own, not enough.” I would not be satisfied with an assassination. I needed to see Mathuin face up to his ill deeds publicly and pay the penalty under the law. Many folk had suffered because of him. Without justice, we would remain forever what he had made us: victims. “Vengeance and justice, together.”

“Family,” said Grim. “For them that have got one.”

“Comrades,” I suggested. “That’s what men fight for, not for some grand cause.”

We sat quiet after that, each of us sunk in memories. Until a man-at-arms came to the door and asked, in an embarrassed mumble, if I knew how to lance a boil in an awkward place. He had a friend with him who was trying hard not to laugh. I was tempted to give him a smack.

Grim put everything back on his tray. “Better?” he murmured.

“I’ll do.”

5

Grim

For a while we’re both on edge. Thinking Lady Geiléis might talk to the prince or Flidais, convince them Blackthorn’s the one to go to Bann with her and solve her problem. Convince them she needs Blackthorn more than they do. But days pass and nobody says anything. The prince has sent for the druid, Master Oisín. So Lady Geiléis is waiting.