It's one single, solitary advantage of Vervain's mutilated blindness that even crying himself to exhaustion won't leave him snotty and congested. He sounds (he thinks) exactly as serious and steady as he'd always hoped to, facing the inevitability of death.

(But he is so, so afraid, even if he is equally certain this is the only way.)

"I'm going to climb the pilgrimage path after Theobald's men." The sudden, eerie calm that seizes him when he says it surely means this is the right choice. "If the cold doesn't take me, I expect the griffon will. Hopefully that's enough for them--enough for the gods.

"Tuo," and now he has to breathe very deeply, to not start crying again, "if you ever get back to 'Thwaite, will you tell Gram I died on pilgrimage? And...and find someone to look after my bees, if that's not too much to ask."