Doran Penn

Hewngate's toll-clerk from before the takeover, kept alive in the undercroft because Bron Coldhand needs a true hand on the ransom-roll — the one man in the keep who writes down every name so that some day a name can be answered for.

Doran kept Hewngate's honest toll for House Vandahl for eleven years, and when the Broken Lances took the keep he was not killed, because Coldhand values a fair number the way he values a fair blade: it is the only honest thing in a dishonest business. So Doran balances the toll-books and the ransom-roll under one guard, sleeps in a cell, and keeps — hidden, against a hanging — every chit and count of what is truly done here, because he cannot stop it and will not forget it. He is no fighter and makes no pretence of it; his courage is the ledger. He has read the accounts closely enough to know the thing no one in the keep will say aloud: that Coldhand feeds something up the castle road, at the Foldfast, and is afraid of it.