Elren Amin

An old human man with failing lungs and a grip firmer than his age suggests, a retired adventurer before he was a councilor, and not born in Haudh-Gwenn. He decides quickly rather than carefully and knows his way around a blade. Johanka Materai, with the city burning, called him old but able to defend himself.

When the rising began he did not go to ground. He went to the chamber, to steady the council and to keep Dalvaar Rashaa’s worst habits in check, and when the others convened in a back parlor he was absent, because he was holding the town hall against seizure.

Two sellswords poured accelerant down the front of the building and rolled burning barrels against the back door. Koa heaved the barricade clear and found him in the smoke, down on one knee and propped on a drawn sword, too smoke-wrecked to answer a shout, and carried him out. He sent Koa straight back in for three more people in a room off the main chamber, and all three lived. He had stayed inside on purpose, to see who came through the door and to end it himself if it was the wrong people, and when Koa came back down from the upper floor he was waiting at the head of the stairs, blade out and angled at the ground between them. “Why were you doing everything you’ve done? Haudh-Gwenn?” Koa told him: to save it, and now let’s get out of here. Outside he gave his name, recognized Koa by it and Mikhail by his lute, and refused to arrest either. “No arrest needed. I just needed to know if I had to keep you in there to end it.” He did not appreciate their methods, he said, and he could not say he did not appreciate what they had been trying to do. He had wanted tracking dogs for the city for years, and was glad now that he never got them.

He worked the surviving arsonist himself. Kaji was told that if he wanted any way of surviving the noose he would work with Amin, and was dangled the meeting with Beltran’s family that he had asked for. Amin told the council afterward that it was bait and not a deal, then let it pass when Aldo pointed out that hours had gone by with the brother’s body still in that house, and Traxian’s people would smell it. He bore Kaji no ill will for having tried to burn him alive: not the first time someone had tried. He also turned one of the witch’s cursed figures of Lady Eravil out of his own baggage, and on hearing that it dulls the faculties said it might be why he had been bested by a small door of fire.

He is the reason the four councilors meeting in secret are not quite a bloc. He would not sign a permanent voting pact, since he usually makes decisions on his own account, and settled for saying he would think on the matter. He agreed to the banking plan because he could argue it on its merits, one harsh winter to save ten, and to vote publicly against Materai on Ostrad so the alliance would not be obvious. On the trial he would not hear of the charge being dropped, because carving out exceptions is exactly how the Grayeras work, and named the real injustice as the singling out: all three of the Valiant Few or none. If Koa stood alone he would vote against him, to prove there are consequences; if all three stood together, to forgive.