Sergeant Tholer

A House Vandahl sergeant working out of Valenfeld's market, quietly running down the Silt Hands' forged-seal ring from the town side — with too few men and too little the House will admit to.

Tholer keeps the House's law in Valenfeld with a squad that thins every month and a purse that bounced years ago. He is the man the House points at the forged-seal problem — the Silt Hands cutting Vandahl signets to walk contraband through Vandahl's own checkpoints — and he is honest enough to hate that the rot runs up into the gaol he is supposed to trust. He cannot march the garrison into the drains on a hunch, so he hires outlanders to look where he can't: the drop-points, the drain-routes, the couriers who went down and didn't come up. He plays it patient and plain, because loud is how a sergeant with no men gets himself buried in his own memory hole.