The messenger leads us through a courtyard to the castle’s heart. Just the heart is bigger even than the great Makerhall in the centre of town. We go to a heavy, wooden door with carved stone above it made to look like a scroll. I want to touch it because it curves almost like water, but the Sin Eater doesn’t stop, and it’s too high to reach anyway.

Inside is a passageway lined with doors. I try to imagine what might be behind each – kitchen, scullery, larder, buttery, storeroom, servants’ chamber . . . The messenger leads us to a set of stairs. I give a small prayer for protection going up. On the next level, there are even more doors – linen closet, herb dispensary, silver room . . . My mind falls short of imagining what could be inside. Then we go up yet another set of stairs. We’re higher in the air than I have ever been. We must be as high as starlings fly. My head feels light, but I still wish there were a window for me to see out of.

How does the town look from a starling’s range? I ask the terrifying stairs. Could I see my old house?

I get my wish soon enough. We pass a slit window in the stone. All I see is east out of the castle: pasture and farmland. Still, the houses look like miniatures and the sheep! As small as ants. The older Sin Eater pulls me by the collar. I think I hear a stitch tear.

A great ham of a woman awaits us in a doorway. She seems to be a woman, though she is so painted she could well be a picture. Her face has been covered in white paint. Her eyebrows are drawn into narrow arches. Each cheek is marked with an oval of red, and her lips are painted into a small bow. Across her bosom is the same white as her face but with blue veins painted on top. Only a nervousness that makes her mouth pucker and tremble shows she’s a breathing lady and not canvas. I can tell she’s rich beyond rich because her enormous skirt’s embroidered with jewels. Then I notice her stomacher. Tawny orange like her skirt and hemmed with cloth of silver. The only folk allowed to wear cloth of silver are the ladies of the Queen’s bedchamber. There’s rules about it.

This Painted Pig has to sidestep out of the doorway while we pass because she and the Sin Eater are both so plump. She’s surprised to see a second sin eater, I can tell, but I wear the S, so there’s nothing for it. The Painted Pig leaves us and takes the news of our arrival through an inner door flanked by guards.