Aubrey

Aubrey keeps the one tavern in Westwood, which is also where the town’s letters are collected, and he is gruff about all of it. When the Valiant Few came through as landowners nobody had heard of, they found that being the heroes of Loshev and Haudh-Gwenn counted for precisely nothing this far south, and Aubrey was the clearest evidence of it. Mikhail’s jokes about valiance fell flat on him. He thawed a degree on hearing whose land they had, since it adjoins Landor de Bellun’s estate, and gave them directions out to it.

He is free with an insult, and freest at the expense of the Dhel, whom he does not rate as porters. The one thing he will not have suggested is that he takes a cut of what passes through his hands, and he says so unprompted.

Friday is music night. Mikhail played it with two of the town’s three councilors in the room and travelers besides, and the house spent the evening trying to buy him drinks. Between songs Aubrey sent one of the extra hands over with the old bard’s arrangement: rather than take the drinks, split their value with the house and keep half of it in coin. The gruffness did not last the night. The company left Westwood with a standing invitation to come back and play it again.