I walked all around it, examining it closely. The man carried a pack of some description over his shoulder, not unlike the one I had just given to Jil, and it made him look as if he were about to make a journey; a fitting pose to commemorate the beginning of a nomadic life, I thought.

It was not until I had circled the statue several times that I noticed a shallow intricate pattern snaking up one strongly muscled arm. I wondered if this had been Cassandra’s way of representing a tattoo. Twentyfamilies gypsies used the grisly technique of pressing tiny, sharp, ink-laden spikes into the skin to mark out an indelible design. I knew this intimately because Swallow had broken Twentyfamily lore by giving me – an outsider – the same tattoo all purebloods wore. It had been a painful process and ultimately pointless, for my body had regarded it as a wound and healed it with the dumb and uncontrollable power gifted it by the Agyllian birds. The tattoo upon Luthen’s arm, if it was a tattoo – if it was Luthen – was not the tattoo given me of three flamebirds flying in a spiral, but it was the tattoo of a bird and it seemed to me that I had seen it before, though I could not think where.

Studying it, I could not decide if the bird was an Agyllian, but the longer I stared at the statue the more sure I was that it was the brother of the Red Queen. His clothes were the same scanty attire as folk wore in my dreams of the hot Red Land, and it was possible that the Twentyfamilies tradition of tattooing had originated in the Red Queen’s land. Perhaps those who intended to follow Cassy across the sea to the Land had been tattooed before leaving, as a way of marking their allegiance to her and her quest to prepare the way for the Seeker. I could imagine she would have relished using the three bird design in this way, after it had been used by a man she had despised to obscure shameful activities.

I turned my attention to the letters and numbers on the amulets, knowing I could revisit my own memory of the statue if there was a need for it. Some bore markings too indistinct to make out and I wondered if that was how Cassy had carved them or whether Iriny had not looked at them well enough to imprint them on her memory. Or maybe the statue had weathered over time.

The statue began to lose definition and I turned to see that the younger Iriny was departing.

‘The memory is ending,’ warned the older Iriny.