The old crows watch as she walks the narrow path towards Everild, her yellow shawl trailing like a comet in the coming gloom. From their perch, high in the bell-tower of St Agrippa’s Church, the trailing river channels, criss-crossed by bridges, look like banded snakes. The streets around them like a disturbed nest of leaf skeletons.

She walks quickly and carefully, hopscotching the puddles and piles of refuse and her wake is the turning of heads. In the ragged bird’s wheeling eye she is a mote of ember in a dying fire. She walks quickly to Everild Bridge, and in the gathering gloom her shadow - reaching out like a beggar's arm - is the hand of doom upon the streets.