That startled me enough to get my whole attention, but it should not have surprised me, for the horses of the Land had always been inclined to activism. ‘Did you wish to go with her?’ I asked.

‘I would not have been wanted,’ the stallion said solemnly. ‘I have too much funaga about me for Avra these days.’

His words saddened me for his sake, but he did not seem much downcast by the departure of the mare, and I reminded myself yet again that horses saw relationships differently from humans.

Ducking to avoid a low, hanging branch, I thought about the statue I had seen in Iriny’s memory. I had not asked if it had been inspired by Cassy’s Red Land bondmate, but I felt sure I was right, if only because of the resemblance of its subject to statues of Evander Cassy had chiselled. I would have liked to know how the statue had ended up in relative obscurity in a patch of forest on Noviny’s property in Saithwold when it had originally been presented to the Councilmen of the day by Evander, as D’rekta of the Twentyfamilies, on the west coast.

I conjured the clue in my mind that referred to the safe-passage memorial: That which will reach the [heart/centre/core] of the [sentinel/guard/watcher] seals a [pact/promise/vow] which I did forge but never witnessed/saw.

Then I pictured the words cut into the base of the statue:

when one door is closed another may open
Luthen’s code is Luthen’s heart.

The fact that both Cassy’s clue and the words on the statue included the word heart suggested to me that they concerned the part of Sentinel that allowed it to operate and function, since a computermachine had no true heart. Of course, the repetition of the word might only be a coincidence arising from Fian’s attempt to find a word that would properly and exactly translate the meaning of the Gadfian script in the clue. But if I was right, the carved words might be a code that would enable me to ensure that Sentinel would never wake. Though it was only a machine I was thinking about, it gave me a queer feeling to realise that, in a sense, I was talking about killing Sentinel as it slept.

I had just reached the road when the sound of wagon wheels and clopping hoofs penetrated the bubbling stew of my thoughts. I looked up to see one of the Teknoguild wagons coming round a bend towards me, drawn by the enormous obliging mare Lo.