The first cut-throat has already fled the doorway, leaving it open for the second cut-throat to follow. He wastes not a moment thundering out in his heeled boots.

‘Broke the doorframe entirely.’ Paul climbs down the loft’s ladder.

‘Run off like rabbits,’ an unfamiliar voice sounds from behind him. ‘Good show, Brida. Inspired improvisation!’

My heart is thumping, and my arms feel light and tingly. Still, I note that my vagabonds have returned. And increased, like mould or toadstools.

‘My apologies,’ the new man says. ‘Paul and I violated the intimate chamber. We heard a scuffle at the door and fled.’

‘You waste words, Frederick,’ says Paul. ‘She’s a sin eater; she doesn’t speak.’

‘But she can hear, can she not?’

‘What does it matter?’ Paul says back.

‘Beasts are calmed by the voice,’ says Frederick. ‘Even pig men speak to their sows before the slaughter.’ He bites playfully at the air. ‘I’ll keep her from gobbling us up.’

Brida sets herself down by the hearth. Paul goes to build up the fire for her. After the unkind way he’s spoken to her before, I’m surprised by his care.

Brida’s spent by her act. As my heart calms, I find I am too. But I look over this Frederick before I go to my bed. He’s older, the age my da was when he passed. But he’s healthy and better dressed than Paul and Brida. Working at some trade. But not a reputable one or he’d be at an inn. I don’t expect any more notice from a man who likened me to a sow, but as I cross to the ladder, Frederick calls out, eyes looking past my shoulder, ‘I solicit pardon for our poor manners. Paul has Saturn’s spleen. We do her wrong that would be, should she deign to accept us, our most gracious host.’

An actor. One, I suspect, who’s mocking me. I need quiet for my nerves to settle, not a house of rude vagabonds and grown pantoboys. I climb the ladder to the loft.

There’s still a little tingle left in my arms. Cut-throats are as suspicious as any folk, I reassure myself. They aren’t like to come back. And yet what Grey Beard said in the dungeon wasn’t true. Black Fingers is willing to murder the only sin eater. I am expendable. Mayhap he’s having the recorder make another sin eater right now. My heart starts its thumping again. How do I stop Black Fingers from coming after me?

He certainly could be the one who poisoned the women and placed deer hearts on their coffins. Mayhap if I sort out the mess, he’ll be executed. My heart thumps soften a hair. I just need to sort out this mess.

If it were a jammed lock, how would Da fix it?

Let it tell you.