As I turn the next corner, I see a maid, head bowed, coming out of a smallish door. A store closet, mayhap. But it’s not a maid. It’s one of the young ladies from the Queen’s chamber, the pretty Fair Hair, wearing a butter-yellow dress and straightening the coif on her head.

A voice calls to her. ‘I wondered where you had disappeared to.’ It’s Mush Face, coming from around a turn.

‘I told you I needed candles,’ Fair Hair answers. ‘I was looking for a maid to fetch some.’

‘In the herb dispensary?’ Mush Face eyes Fair Hair. ‘Did you hear about the Eating? The Queen’s dearest Corliss was a witch.’

Fair Hair’s mouth works like a newly caught fish. ‘There was pomegranate on the coffin?’

‘And a deer heart as big as a rabbit,’ Mush Face says.

‘Witches kill for their magic, I’ve heard tell,’ says Fair Hair. ‘We should return to the presence chamber.’

‘Where are your candles?’ Mush Face asks without moving her eyes.

‘My what?’

It’s then Fair Hair sees me, still as a bird in a bush, at the passageway’s turn. She starts twice when she sees me, first to find folk there and again when she sees my brass S. Her eyes drop, and both ladies make the Maker’s sign across their shoulders and hips.

‘She’s the one who ate the deer heart,’ Mush Face says. ‘It’s poor luck to see her after the Eating.’

‘Why, that’s old-faith mummery,’ says Fair Hair. She puts her hand on Mush Face’s arm and leads her towards the Queen’s sitting room.

Just as they disappear down the way, the door to the herb dispensary opens again and out comes Black Fingers, the Queen’s secretary. It’s odd that two folk came from the same, small closet, but mayhap the oddness’s a sign from the Maker. Black Fingers has the Queen’s ear.

I summon my breath. ‘Sir!’ I call to him. Even though I haven’t been a sin eater long, my voice sounds wrong and at the same time welcome like warm water. Black Fingers hardly takes me in before he’s begun the Maker’s Prayer. I try to raise my voice over his. ‘There was a misdeed committed, Sir! It must be set right.’ But he only speaks louder, drowning out my words, turning to go on his way.

I run after him, my collar bumping hard at my neck. I need something to catch his attention. I call louder still. ‘A killing’s been blamed on the wrong folk. The Queen must be told.’