“You think members of Minnow’s family might have been blank?”

“I don’t know – I’m just saying it’s a possibility. Maybe that’s why Davey Minnow joined the crows – to help them. Or he could have just been a man with a heart.”

“Not much family resemblance, then,” I say sourly.

“I know you hate him, but Jack Minnow is as human as you. It’s like anything – anyone,” she says. “If you know their story, it’s much harder to hate them.”

“You say that, but you’re no different – all your life you wouldn’t listen to the blanks. You wouldn’t hear their story.”

She nods. “Absolutely. I thought I had the whole story. And I was wrong – blind. I thought I was protecting our people. It’s not a great excuse. But people change. I have changed, and I hope that gives you some hope.”

She is quiet for a moment, thinking, and then she says, “One night, many years ago when we were both young and he had too much to drink, Jack told me that he had once accompanied his father on a mission with the crows, to bring the blanks food and drink. He was very young, just a boy. He talked of conversations around a fire, of companionship between blank and marked. His face was soft, as though the memory was a happy one.”

It occurs to me, at last, that this is how Jack Minnow and Sana know each other. Sana told me about blanks and crows meeting in the forest; of course their paths would have crossed, a friendship forged.

I imagine Minnow and Sana as children, sitting on stones around a fire, sharing stories while the adults danced. I can just hear Sana telling Jack the story she told me – her favourite tale, of the lovers, the king who staged his death and believed in his own resurrection. I wonder. Not for the first time, I wonder why Minnow told Sana that there would be a public meeting that day in the square. He must have known she couldn’t resist the theatre of an assassination, in front of all Longsight’s people – an attack just when they were boasting of their strength. Why? I think. Why?

“I think he loved those days,” Mel says. “He would hate me to say it – but I think he enjoyed being part of the crows and was proud of his father, until…”

“Yes?” I urge.

“Jack’s father – Davey Minnow – was killed.” Mel’s brow furrows.

“What happened?”

“There are a number of stories. Some crows said he died in the forest of a sudden heart attack. Others think he was hijacked by the leaders of Saintstone – that his death was a warning to the crows that they must stop their support of the blanks. Jack Minnow, however, believes his father was killed by the blanks. That certain rebels within the blank community hated even the crows for being marked and made an example of him. Whatever the truth of it, those joyful gatherings ended when Davey Minnow died.