Dona Vorchenza has always been careful never to ask anything of her charge, not since the day she had taken him in, and when he comes to her with his blackjacket’s uniform still new and crisp on his shoulders, she simply says, “It’s a good fit,” and adjusts the fall of his cape.

She feels his back tense under her hand, because he has always been too honest to hide, and she regrets, suddenly, that her office has made her less than straightforward.

It feels far too blunt when she takes his sword-callused hand in her own wrinkled ones and says, “You could never disappoint me, Stephen,” but when his shoulders slump with a shy, marvellous smile, she thinks with a fierce possessiveness that she does not say it enough.