Mourner Ithal

Keeper of the Hush-House, the Mourners' Highbridge chapter — an old bellbearer who keeps the city's burial rolls and rations the order's too-few closings with a fair hand and a heavy heart.

Ithal has closed more of Highbridge's dead than any voice living, and it has worn him the way water wears a step — smoother, not thinner. He carries the order's whole dilemma in his ledger: too many dead, too few hands to close them properly, and fees that keep the bells fed but not clean. He recruits the unburied — travelers, blades, strangers — because grief, he says, is the one trade that never lacks for work.