To be free - yes, she understands a lot of that hunger. Seen it burn in men and women all her life. Seen people either hide and brandish their scars from the irons. Seen her brothers, her lover, die in part want of freedom from persecution and constant arrests, all that hard, hard labour.

"Sharper than the kitchen knives?" she asks, practically. "Even the carving ones?

She's had to chop up bone with a kitchen saw, but that is a blunt instrument for something as delicate as creating a needle.