Maret of the Cullers

The Cullers' ranking huntress, who runs the Cullhold and has noticed that the Rotcrown Stag left offspring — more than one skull in her collection is half-crowned with bronze.

Maret was a Greenwake warden before the Cullers were a named cell; she was the one who first argued that mercy-killing a work-sick beast is mercy, not waste. She runs the Cullhold with the same logic applied to inventory: every beast put down clean is a debt to the living wood repaid in the clearest currency. She is not cruel and not angry. She is, however, counting the bronze-crowned skulls, and the number keeps going up, and she has started having a feeling about the Rotcrown Stag's surviving young that she hasn't told Esk yet.