Dresha Deepwarden

The eldest wreck-warden of Sresh-Dar and head of the Keepers of the Deep, who has held the salvage-rights of the drowned valley longer than any living crew can remember. She speaks little, signs nothing she will not honor, and has refused three Houses to the same word: the water is free.

Dresha came up off the bottom of the Mirrenmere as every Hessk dive-master does, and she has sat at the public scale of Sresh-Dar weighing other crews' take for forty seasons. She is not a ruler — the free-port has no ruler — but the council moves at her unhurried pace, and when she names a lane closed or a wreck spoken-for, it stays closed. She deals coldly and exactly with the Gaunt Ledger and tolerates the Silt Hands as a tide tolerates a leak, but she will close the whole harbor before she lets a crown buy the salvage-rights. Land-folk find her unblinking patience unnerving; her own people find it the only thing that has kept the port theirs.