Dareshi the Wheelwarden

The soot-furred elder who keeps the Wheelmoot's circuit and its ledger of road-debts, judging clan quarrels from a cushioned wheel-seat in Sresh-Dar so no closed route ever starves the next town. Patient, sly, and impossible to outwait at a bargain.

Dareshi has driven the southern circuit since before the crown went quiet, and lost two caravans to reavers and one daughter to a feud he could not settle in time — which is why he settles them now. As Wheelwarden he is the Wheelmoot's first voice: he holds the road-ledger that names every debt owed between the trade-clans, hears the quarrels that would otherwise close a route, and pronounces caravan-law. He has no title the crown would recognize and wants none. He keeps a warm tea-bowl for every petitioner and a long memory for every broken promise, and he will talk a man in a circle until the man settles just to be let go. The marauders know his name and avoid his stretch of road; the Silt Hands resent him because a road kept open by law is a road they cannot quietly own.