Have you named them?

Richard is too composed to spend the breath he’d pulled in to ask on a sigh. There are more strategic routes he could have taken -- meatier subject matter, better suited to his audience, more barbed wire than signal light. But it’s nothing (or no one) he cares to discuss presently, in this little tavern, with a tankard in hand.

He sets the tankard aside, a twinge of tension along his neck passed off as a nod.

Of course. Easy.