Old Ness

aka the Cairn-Keeper

Keeps the Grey Walker's cairn-shrine and the Waybread Hearth beside it — the Span's warmest fixture, who remembers every traveler's name better than she remembers her own family's.

Ness has added a stone to the cairn every day for longer than anyone at the Span has been counting, and somewhere in that habit she picked up the trick of never forgetting a face that passed through. She'll greet a merchant she met once, six years back, by name, and ask after a horse that's probably long dead — and get it right often enough that people have stopped being surprised. She feeds anyone stuck at the toll, keeps the Hearth's fire lit through the worst river-fog nights, and tells anyone leaving in the morning to add a stone on their way, though she's stopped explaining why; the ones who need to hear it, hear it.

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