Worlds to play, cards to import

Widowed keeper of a Rootden boarding house — respectable to the street, and landlady of the Taproot Cellar where the Chorus meets below her boards.

Judge of the Anchored Bench: the incorruptible voice of river-law, famous for rowing a crown's writ back unserved — and quietly vain about exactly that.

Master of the Greatfall Lock: a guild man holding the Riverspine's one gate through the worst queue in living memory, terrified of the day a gate fails on his watch.

Matriarch of the Mallow barge-clan and convener of this year's Merrowmoot — Sedge-Ilai's oldest ally, determined to sell the river's neutrality dearly or not at all.

The Greatfall Lock's living crane: an Ondrel who has hauled the great gates for nine decades and gives the gorge its slowest, surest counsel.

The Anchored Bench's Grimwold oathtaker: he tastes every testimony in brine, and keeps a private tally of the lies the claimant houses' agents tell on the river.

A ferrywoman of the Lantern Shallows and a quiet Meriel loyalist — she carries passengers who cannot be seen travelling, and asks nothing but the fare.

Keeper of the Physic Gardens for forty years — a stooped, seed-hoarding old grower who guards the beds like a border and answers to nobody, including Graftwardens.

A Molded field-medic of the Longwar, now the Green Door Clinic's tireless orderly — clay hands gentle from a century and a half of practice, humming a sorting-song older than the peace.

Housekeeper of Osier House and Fenn Ottley's mother — she has fed three generations of Meriels through two bankruptcies and holds the household's real accounts in her head.

Keeper of the Steeping House — a Maru of a landless clan who made neutral warm water more valuable than any cargo on the river.

The Braidmarket's resident bar-pilot emeritus: fifty years of channel-lore sold by the cup from a moored barge, and the Bench's favourite expert witness.

Fern Duskwell's shop apprentice — quick-handed, debt-bound, and memorizing the chained ledger one glimpse at a time.

Tarn-Osella's son and the Riverspine's smuggler prince — charming, indebted, and famous for never bargaining on water, where a Maru's word would bind him.

Matriarch of the Tarn barge-clan — proud, capable, and locked in a two-generation feud with the Sedge clan that she would rather feed than win.

Chief rigger of the Nine Stairs — a Chittik mechanist who keeps the cranes, capstans and stair-winches turning, and who Berest trusts to check his chains.

Motherwell laundress and Barefoot Chorus voice — the woman whose loaf-counting verse jumped from the wash-court to three quarters in a fortnight.

Sylvithi herb-grower with plots on the Physic Gardens' terraces — the Simplers' Hall's best supplier, whose bonded tree in the Rootwild has begun dropping leaves in spring.

Riverrun's best canal-law advocate retained by House Meriel for a tenth of her fee, because she believes the River Oath should mean the same thing for a barge-widow as for a claimant.

Keeper of the Banked Coal taproom: feeder of every furnace shift on Glasshouse Row, enforcer of the no-politics rule, and hearer of everything anyway.

Master glass-harvester of the Mirrorfield — runs the steadiest cutting crew on the black glass, cousin to a Pyre Quarter alchemist and supplier to half of Glasshouse Row, keeper of one pane he will not sell.

Warden of the Alembic Hall: chief examiner of Coronal's licensed alchemists, keeper of the Register, and enemy of every shortcut in the city.

The Marshal-Duke's elder brother and keeper of the Solfast — the Draken-Sol who stayed home, holding the ancestral seat, the founding flame, and a gate filling up with veterans.

Housekeeper of Solhearth Palace: thirty years of Draken-Sol secrets kept behind one calm face, and a soft spot for the youngest heir she half-raised.