In Bree-Land lays the village of Combe, eerily quiet as they always expect the worst from their briganding neighbours in near-by Archet.
In Combe stands the Comb and Wattle Inn, its lustrous sheen long lost, its very walls only standing through the sheer strength of will of its owner.
In the inn, down at the back, there’s the one room with the door closed off. “’Tis for stocking,” the owner says, as she is paid good coin to.

In the small room at the back of the inn, there’s a bed that’s never quite made, blankets moth-eaten and pillows stale. There’s a small table with a candle-holder that’s dripped all the way to the floor, and a chair with many musty pillows piled on. There’s a brazier underneath a small window. The window’s begrimed by time, dust and grease; it overlooks the backyard and never creaks whether it closes or opens.

There’s a roll of roughcloth and a bundle of straw by the table, and then there’s a chest. Well, there’re *two* chests. A small one under the bed, that’s never to be opened, and that contains: a plum-coloured pettycoat of good cloth, light and smooth; a lad’s first knife, now very blunt and a little rusty, in a sturdy leather sheath; a peacock’s feather, blue and green and yellow and black; a stack of letters both opened and unpoened, some of them stricken through; a tiny pouch with a handful of polished pebbles and the one shard of sapphire; all under the cover of a heavy coat of goat fur lined with a checkered hem.

The other chest is bigger and open almost always. It holds a jumble of bits and blobs, of odds and ends; cloth offcuts; a dozen unmatching gloves; three masks from Harvestmath; an extensive sewing set; two curly wigs, one black, the other blond; matching false facial hair; a trove of acorns, buttons and small pebbles; a bunch of half-finished, half-stuffed dolls. Then, underneath it all, pouches, wallets, coinbags, all in various states of decay and emptiness, pilfered and never parted with.

And above the bed, on a tilted shelf, and all along the wall well-tucked in bed, a collection of straw-stuffed, cloth-clad dolls, with buttons for eyes and acorn for noses, their mouths a pink line, in little dresses, little tunics, and little coats.