Da said things just want to work right, but they’re getting more broken and muddled. There’s only one thing the poisoning has shown: it wasn’t the witch’s poppet that killed Corliss. I know that much for certain now. There’s another fiend at work as well. A witch and a poisoner. I wish the other Sin Eater were here. Ruth, I named her, I remind myself.

Meg’s waiting for me. I list off the foods. Clotted cream for gluttony, plain cream for envy, hippocras for drunkenness, mustard seed for lies, whipped syllabub for deception, until there’s none left, only Tilly’s last whispered words hanging in the air between us. Meg’s eyes stay keen on the floor rushes, waiting to see if I add the heart.

Beyond us, on the bed, Tilly begins to shake again. White foam comes to her lips.

I close the Recitation. ‘Any last words?’ But Tilly is beyond that.

When I come out of the scroll door, for a moment the sunlight warms away the muddle. I take a deep breath. The air is still just air. The stones are still just stones. The day is still day. If I walked away now back to Dungsbrook, mayhap I could leave these grim dealings behind.

But then I look out across the courtyard and see the tower. Underneath it is the dungeon. That’s where Ruth is.

My guts say, Flee. They say it loud and plain so I barely even notice the uneven cobbles beneath my thin slippers, still on the wrong feet.

It takes fewer steps than I think to cross the courtyard, fewer steps than I want to reach the dungeon. There’s no guards to block me going in. It’s only going out that’s forbidden.

Ten mouldy, green stairs take me down into the earth. At the bottom is a doorway guarded by a lumpy man on a stool with a beard as furry as the mouldy steps. Beyond him is a stone hallway that’s wet like it’s weeping. The hallway has wooden doors every few paces along it until it’s too dark to see. It’s not like the jail I was in, a big, earthen room with a lock on it and everyfolk crowded in. This one’s only for traitors and highborn folk.

‘Who’s been granted a visit from a sin eater?’ Mouldy Beard says aloud. His voice echoes down the passage.

An older guard wearing a neat, grey beard shaped like a spade comes out of the dark corridor. He lets his eyes rove across me without settling. ‘None to die today. Send her away.’

‘How?’ asks Mouldy Beard like he’s been asked to remove a snake.

‘None to die today,’ Grey Beard says louder.