Once he’s gone, I lean against the wood-panelled wall to have a think. I still smell smoke in the air, and there’s tracks of ash along the floor.

Let it tell you, comes Da’s voice.

I let what I already know come back to me. Corliss and Tilly Howe were poisoned and hearts placed on their coffins, saying they murdered a royal babe, even though they never confessed such a thing.

The Painted Pig’s door was stuck with pitch and a fire set in her room. She was meant to die next. Her words echo in my head. We’re being murdered so the crime will be revealed to the world by our coffins.

It’s like the fairy tale of Mr Fox where Clever Mary kills him and, in so doing, shows the town his crimes. If the Painted Pig’s right, the killer isn’t blaming them for another folk’s crime. The killer truly believes they killed a babe. But they didn’t.

So who did? And what babe? And who placed the hearts on their coffins?

It’s like thinking through honey. What would my mother say?

Look to your advantage.

Knowing something others don’t is an advantage. That’s the root of every rogue’s play, know more than your mark. The Painted Pig’s given me something most others don’t know: a tapestry with a secret. Mayhap that’s where I’ll find my advantage. And I have a mind which tapestry she means. Diana of the Wood, the one from the Queen’s sitting room that Fair Hair said Corliss gave to Bethany.

I daren’t go back to the Queen’s quarters to look at it with Black Fingers so eager to torture me. But I don’t need to. The tapestry’s stuck in me like porridge in the gullet.

I slide down the wall until I’m crouched on the floor. In my head I go around each part of the tapestry.

The naked Queen under a full moon. Easy to remember, that.

Her hand against the trunk of a tree, a winged fairy in its branch, coming out of a flower.

The Queen’s other hand on her belly. Something about the belly, I remember, felt wrong.

A blue boar curled like a dog at her feet. A lion too, and a stag.

Each small bit I recall helps me remember more, like the links of a chain necklace bringing me round to the pendant.