The Magistrate
Who she is
The market compact’s magistrate on Veylan Steps. The Steps have no single government; the compact handles dispute, and its magistrate and constables are the law. She presides at every Opening, because nothing can be sold on the Steps until the law has heard where it came from. She reads the register as it was written when the cask went into the dark: the rows the fruit came from, the day it was sealed, and the cellar that would keep it.
Appearance
A thin woman with a voice that carries to the galleries of the inspection court without seeming to try.
Personality
- Exact and unhurried. Everyone on the Steps knows that if a seal is found broken, the magistrate comes knocking.
People in her life
- Dareth: she names him in the register at every Opening he keeps: “in the gallery of Dareth, cellarer.”
- The constables: two of the compact’s constables answer to her, and were drinking on duty at Selvane’s share casks on Opening night.
As the story unfolds
These details come from the story itself. Choose the last chapter you’ve read, and only what has been revealed up to that point will appear.
The register
By custom she presides at every Opening. She reads the register as it was written twenty-one years before, in a voice that carries to the galleries without seeming to try: “Kept in Hushvault, in the gallery of Dareth, cellarer.”
Morwal’s door
Called to Morwal’s gallery the morning after the Opening, she comes in her nightclothes with her gray hair in a plait, and keeps her voice low. She asks Ansel about the blood on his shirt and why he was at Wendel’s door, and presses Dareth over the key: “I’ve read the register at every one of your Openings, cellarer, and in all those years I don’t believe you’ve told me a single thing I didn’t have to ask you for first.” When Hessary’s factor says the four buyers weren’t Hessary’s, she holds the port (“Nothing lifts from the basin until I say so”) and closes the Steps: “Nobody leaves the Steps until I’ve found them.”
Cellarer
As Dareth turns Ansel toward home, she says, “Don’t go far, cellarer.” / “I never do.” Later, three quick knocks come at the house door of Selvane’s gallery, and her voice says, “Cellarer.” The knock comes again, the same three, no harder than before, and no footsteps go away.