Keith

A porter who carried letters between Lenore and Freya, called Face, of the Tillermen. He rode into Harad one morning asking after Lenore, at a time when Captain Jack had Luca Green keeping quiet eyes on her, so that she might lead the party to the fugitive she had come to see. Rather than let him ride back out, Luca’s men took him. They shot the horse to stop him and it came down on top of him and broke his ribs.

He woke in the wine cellar under the tavern with smelling salts under his nose and a very large man asking him questions. He gave his own name so haltingly that Aldo checked whether he was lying about it, and he was not. He was frightened and concussed and had worked out that something here was wrong, and when he began to ask whether these people were really the guard he stopped himself and decided he would rather not know. What loosened him was being told he was not in trouble, and that there was a reason he was in a cellar and not a cell. The letter had gone from Lenore to Freya, and what it said was that the crew had made it to the university: a library at Bardh, in Peredhel, south of Meshtes through the mountains.

They asked him about the gnolls burning their way west and about Ugo, and he had no idea what any of it meant and asked whether he was awake or asleep. Then they let him go. Jack gave him a horse to replace the one the militia had shot, walked him out to it, and told him to keep quiet about what he had heard, because Ugo did not mind a ballad but disliked the truth traveling.