Dural

The Undertow's last warden, who took the bar off the gaol-drain gate and walked out the same way the prisoners do — up through the dark toward the coin of daylight. He does not ask what is below, and he will not ask what you are.

Dural was a warden of House Vandahl's bluff gaol until the pay stopped and the conscience started. He was told to feed the forgotten and forget them himself; he managed the first part and could not manage the second. So he took the bar off the drain gate — 'consider it my notice handed in' — and started the slow climb out through the drowned drains, and there he still is, too honest to have kept the job and too tired to move fast. He is the warden who doesn't ask what's below: he knows the Silt Hands run the dry chambers, knows the House flushes more than water down here, and knows the thing that dens in the sump. He gives the living the only warning he has left — when the water goes still and cold, don't wait to find out, climb — and he means you no harm at all. 'I never saw you.'