I SLEEP SO SOUNDLY, it’s midday before the knocking pulls me out of bed. Hearing the messenger say Bessie’s name is sort of like an exhale I’ve been holding in. I didn’t want her to die, but there’s relief in no more waiting.

Lee and Tom are at the Eating, of course, and other faces I know. And yet they seem different. It’s like my old memories were all looking through one window into a house and now I’m looking in through a different window. It’s the same room inside, but the light hits it different. Tom’s a grown man, with hair coming out of his ears. Gracie Manners, who always knew everything there was to know, has three children pulling at her skirts and the look of an old daffodil. Even the house seems different from Bessie’s Recitation. Smaller.

Before I leave, I pass through the kitchen. Sitting on a shelf is the old salt bowl painted with bluebells. I take it with me to add to my sin eater box. A token of Bessie.

My feet look mottled under the surface of the water in my fountain. Like the Painted Pig and Paul’s skin. I go to pull my shawl around my shoulders and remember again I left it at the castle.

A few folk come through the square. They see me and go about their business direct, not dallying about. Two children timidly cross to an alley, and I hear the beginnings of a bat-the-stone game.

The sun sets through great, pink clouds. I pull my feet from my fountain and dry them on my skirt. As I do, I see the picture I thought was a witch’s mark. A picture language for beggars. I recall the pictures in Corliss’s tapestry. Mayhap the secret’s in them. Once I think on it, the animals at the Queen’s feet aren’t difficult to figure. Family badges are often animals. The lion could mean Black Fingers. The stag would be the Country Mouse’s family. The boar, another loyal family. But what the tapestry means beyond that, I don’t know.

As I walk home through Northside, it comes to me that it’s not just Bessie’s place and my old neighbours that seem different. The whores lining the tavern row drop their eyes before I pass. And no boys push each other at me for sport. They keep out of sight. I walk down the middle of the road and folk move out of the way, just like they did for the old Sin Eater. Like the ruby sea in the Maker’s story.