The folk sitting are a different matter. At first none notice the Sin Eater’s stopped, for a little pause here and there is usual. But then time stretches out and becomes something to note. It stretches further and becomes something to unsettle. That’s when all the motion no longer in the Sin Eater seems to jump to the other folk. The longer she stays still, the more they need to move about, shifting and looking and peering and whispering.

The Queen herself sits not four paces from us. ‘The sin eater stopped. Is it a portent?’ she asks the Willow Tree.

The Willow Tree talks louder than he should, but more like because he’s unaware than that he means to be loud. ‘I saw no such signs. Perhaps she trembles at the gravity of the sin.’

The Queen signals her black-fingered secretary. He goes to the front of the Makerhall. The Willow Tree hastily follows after as if he doesn’t want to be left out. They talk a bit as if they’re arguing. The secretary’s hands move as he speaks, and his black fingertips look like charred tinder. I swallow away the giggle that comes into my throat.

Black Fingers addresses the hall. ‘The sin eater will proceed with the Eating of Corliss Ashton as is the sin eater’s duty, conferred by the Maker and his agent on earth, Her Majesty, Queen Bethany.’

The Sin Eater doesn’t move.

I know it’s the deer heart. She vowed to eat the sins Corliss recited. The deer heart is a lie. She won’t break her vow. I feel like a squirrel seeing the shadow of a hawk. I dread what’s coming for us.

Black Fingers waits one more breath and then speaks. ‘If the sin eater refuses to eat, she disobeys a direct order from the Maker as it is written in the Maker’s Book.’ Every breath in every body stills. As if following my thoughts, he goes on. ‘To disobey a direct order from the Maker and his agent Queen Bethany’ – his own voice quiets – ‘is treason.’

Treason is death. And under Queen Bethany that’s not by a noose and the gallows but by gutting or burning or worse. I wait for the Sin Eater to move. When she doesn’t, I do something plain foolish. I take my hand and place it on hers. I expect it to be cool and hard like the wood of the pews, but heat pulses off it. I squeeze. I don’t know what I mean by it. Only that something must be done. Something other than stillness and treason and death.

‘Guards!’ Black Fingers’s voice echoes in the hall.