Cat-o'-nine-tails tattoo

The rank mark of the Ten Lashes, and the whole of their order of precedence. The captain wears the cat-o’-nine-tails entire, nine lashes to it; each of the nine beneath him wears a single lash. Captain Torr, out of Ravenhold, bore the nine. The cell runs to exactly ten, and when one of them is taken out of it for good the man who replaces him is inked to show what he has been made.

They all come from one hand. The tattooist goes by Raven, was said to work out of Haudh-Gwenn, and was never found.

Sitting on the forearm, the mark became the thing to check. Kithul put it plainly: whip-lash tattoos on the forearm meant the kidnappers, and not good folk. With the case against Dan laid out and a dead bandit’s mark to match it against, Tariq cut open Dan’s sleeve to a single lash; Sasser’s forearm was bare, which put her outside the ring however crooked she was otherwise. Not every member obliged. Ashtara Walnut would not have anything so easily noticed set where a rolled sleeve would show it, and carried hers somewhere it is not easily found.

Torr is dead and the ring is broken. Ashtara Walnut carried her lash out of Idir with her, under the terms of the exile she bought with the roster.