Mattis Holfast

Mattis Holfast is the captain of the guardhouse that keeps the guard in Crownhold's eastern perimeter — the district where one of the great roads enters the city's old stone wall, and where, these days, the city does not truly end. Settlement has long since spilled out beyond the wall, straggling down the roads in untidy ribbons, so that the real edge of Crownhold lies somewhere past where the masonry stops. A human in his late thirties, broad and going slightly soft, he has the tired, faintly rumpled look of a man with three children at home and a long shift ahead of him. Twelve years a guard and in no danger of promotion, he decided long ago that the job is the job. He is not unpleasant. He simply wants it to be over.

In twelve years on the gate Mattis has never known a run of reports as steady as the last six months — talk, mostly, never evidence, but enough talk that the Concordate has grown anxious and begun thickening the walls. Some of it bends back toward the Fingers, where, he will tell you, people get a bit weird the closer they live. He passes it all upward and forms no theory of his own. Most of it, he suspects, is nothing.

Orsday · 23rd of Octen, 412 Concordis

Newly arrived through the eastern wall, Darian and Alara sought out the district guardhouse and brought Mattis an account of the road-fight and the mark its raiders had worn. He knew the symbol — it had been carried into the city by travellers for months, and the Concordate above him had been jumpy about it. He gave them what little he had: the six-month uptick in rumours, the way some of them bent toward the Fingers, and his own doubt that any of it amounted to much. Then, dropping his voice below the official line — 'I probably shouldn't say this' — he steered them somewhere he likely should not have: the Foaming Head, down by the docks, where the kind of talk they were chasing tends to gather.