Worlds to play, cards to import

Veteran Veskarn mourners' guide of the Ashgarden Terraces — forty years of walking strangers through the worst day of their lives.

A brilliant unlicensed alchemist selling tinctures from a Beadwalk stall — half the quarter swears by her, the Hall wants her examined, and the Ledger owns her debt.

Fire-priest of Skarveth's Unbanked Flame — she keeps the rites that treat fire as an ancestor, and lately spends her days judging 'wrong' panes carried in from the Mirrorfield.

Matriarch of the Reed barge-clan — the Sedge clan's oldest rival, faster and hungrier, willing to carry what Sedge-Ilai's respectability now declines.

Serathi night-stoker at the Emberrow Kilns — Kaevra's clutch-sibling, keeper of the shared-fire law, mourning a third sibling in the Serathi way: alone.

Sedge-Ilai's grandson, apprenticed to a canal-law advocate — the first of the clan to argue the river's law from the land side of the plank.

Heir-designate of the Sedge barge-clan — Sedge-Ilai's daughter, better on the water than her mother ever was and still waiting to be told so.

Senior kiln-tender of the Glasscradle — the Serathi birth-warden who sings clutches into life, and once helped sing out Kaevra of the Ember Clutch.

Keeper of Cinderwell Oasis — widowed mistress of the last water on the ash-road, seller of water, fodder, and news, and neutral the way weather is neutral.

The Marshal-Duke's grand-niece, sent home from Coronal 'for her safety' — keeping the Solfast's books, writing to her cousin Elowen, and noticing everything the household thinks she doesn't.

Skarveth's master bead-wright and the teacher of Ashev of the Nine Fires — the eldest hands on the Flame Floor, and the keeper of one grief she has never fired.

Senior judge of the Watermark Court — twelve years on the flood-scarred bench, a proceduralist who keeps the commercial docket moving under pressure from every house with cargo on the water.

Wharfmaster of the Nine Stairs — the woman who decides which cargo lands on which stair, which makes her the most courted official in Riverrun.

A gifted, impatient young Veskarn bead-wright of Skarveth — Threska's best apprentice in a generation, straining toward Coronal and terrified of telling her so.

Furnace-mistress of Glasshouse Row's oldest glasshouse — third of her name, best of her line, and in debt to the chimney-tops and loudly fighting it.

Veskarn journeyman bead-wright at the Temple of the Nine Fires — Ashev's apprentice, steady-handed with the dead and clumsy with the living.

Glass-broker of the Beadwalk who sells cheap Pyrelands import glass under a grand old name, and is buying respectability one stall at a time.

Deputy guildmaster of the Chandlers' Concord in Granton — Maud Tolley's loyal second in public, and in private the most patient student of when she might fall.

Halbren tithe-wagon driver off the Granlands roads — hauling Coronal's bread from towns going hungry to grow it, and saying so too loudly in too many taprooms.

Keeper of the Gleaners' Shrine — sixty-seven years old, confessor to a frightened quarter, and guardian of the bread table that feeds Granton's hungry by night.

Junior quill-clerk at the Granton Exchange — twenty-three, invisible, and the only person to have set the tithe tallies beside the yard counts and noticed they disagree.

Master brewer of the Old Malting — jovial keeper of Granton's taproom parliament, who hears everything over the third pint and repeats almost none of it.

Yardmaster of the Tithe Yards, twenty years Emberguard before the weighbridge — the man whose calm official counts keep Granton quiet, and who knows exactly how wrong they are.

The Ondrel of the Millrace Steps: he turns the great capstan when the river runs thin, has ground Granton's grain for six decades, and gives counsel at the same speed he gives flour.