I grasp for words to reassure her, but I don’t know the right ones. So I nod, strong and sure. I say, ‘You’ll be remembered.’

Back on my mattress, I lie again side by side with the collar. It’s like a bedfellow. Like if I had a sister. But this sister is a sin eater. And me, lying across the mattress looking at her, I’m just May. Da’s girl. My mother’s daughter. Me.

Mayhap freedom is being able to be more than one thing. Like, I could be May right now, here lying in bed. And if I get up and put on the collar, then I’m choosing to be a sin eater. When I take the collar off, I can go back to just being May. Mayhap freedom is choosing for yourself. Even if the choices are piss-poor.

As sleep comes over me, a stray thought bobs to the surface of the well in my mind. It’s the banner of Katryna, the Queen’s stepmother: a fair-haired maiden coming out of a flower. The fair hair reminds me of another fair-haired maiden. There’s a little click in the wards of the lock. It seems plain once the notion’s in my mind.

I thought that Black Fingers might be the killer behind the muddle, but he can’t be. The killer is trying to ruin the Queen by uncovering her bastard. Black Fingers doesn’t want the Queen harmed. He wants to get an heir on her.

And the Willow Tree wants the Queen to stay on the throne too. His gruesome witchcraft in the Makerhall was all to protect her.

The killer isn’t either of them. The killer is somefolk in a desperate predicament. One with piss-poor choices.

Fair Hair, the lock whispers. I saw her embracing Black Fingers. And plumped up like she’s with child. If she is pregnant by Black Fingers, who wants to marry the Queen, she might be desperate enough to hurt the Queen however she can. Particularly if she fears the Queen had Black Fingers’s first wife thrown down a set of stairs. If the Queen were dethroned for killing a bastard, for instance, Black Fingers wouldn’t want her any more. Fair Hair would be free to marry him. Free.

Could Fair Hair have understood the secret message in the tapestry? I remember Mush Face reading a stranger book with drawings in it. Mayhap Fair Hair knows stranger tongues too. I once saw Fair Hair coming out of the herb dispensary. Herb dispensaries are where some poisons can be got.

I look up at the sin eater boxes. The one with the seashell. The one with the badly done embroidery. The one with a lock of hair. What will be in mine when I pass on? What markers are there of me and what I’ve lived? That I’ve mattered?

An empty bottle of poppy oil

A salt cellar