Corliss is quiet. When she speaks again her voice is high, like a girl’s. ‘I believe I have one more thing to recite.’ She chooses her words. ‘I sinned to protect a folk I dearly love. I swore never to speak of it. But if I am to die, the Queen should know. Well as I taught her, she may not decipher the pictures.’ She shudders, but this time I can tell it’s not from pain, it’s with feeling. ‘I was the Queen’s governess. I’ve lived with her since she was a girl, when she was no more than a cast-off in her stepmother Katryna’s household, long before her fortune turned and she became queen.’ Corliss speaks quicker. ‘Maker help me, I only wanted to protect her. But if others discover what we’ve done, the Queen will fall.’

Corliss shudders again, but this time it seems to linger. No, it begins to grow. The shuddering turns to shaking. Then it’s like she has the falling sickness, she’s shaking so badly. Foam comes to Corliss’s blue lips. The Sin Eater nods me towards the sitting room where the Willow Tree and the Painted Pig went.

All the eyes in the outer sitting room shoot to me when I open the door, then fly away at angles like a clay pot dropped on the floor.

The Painted Pig twists a ring and calls to the room, ‘How now?’

The Willow Tree grasps why I’ve come and sweeps through the door without pause.

He goes direct past Corliss, to the innermost door and knocks. A low murmur comes back through. I have a feeling like water running down my back. Then the inner door opens and in walks the Queen.

I want to drop my eyes, and I want to look. It’s like five folk have walked into the room, but it’s only her. Barely thirty years of age but with as much presence as a granddam. She’s magnificent. I could work all the years of my life and not afford a yard of her skirt. It’s stranger silk, with embroidered birds in gold and red. Her stomacher is gold-embroidered black velvet that highlights the black of her hair. Her curls have been brushed up to give her even more height than she already has, parted only in front to reveal her gold crown.

‘Your Grace.’ The Willow Tree and Painted Pig bow.

The Queen steps forward, but just before she sits, she starts to back up. ‘Is it catching, this flux?’

The Painted Pig takes the smallest of pauses, then answers, ‘No, Your Grace. Your physician declared so himself.’

‘No danger, Your Grace,’ agrees the Willow Tree.

The Queen sits down beside the shaking Corliss. ‘My dear one?’

Corliss’s eyes shift to the side.