Carys
Who she is
Apprentice to Wendel, the cellarer who keeps Morwal’s gallery in Hushvault. Twenty-one years ago Morwal started a long keep of its own, and its first cask, which carries her first mark, came of age this harvest. Morwal asked for it to open in the light at the Opening, which would have made her the one walking the court. Hushvault refused: only one cask opens in the light, and it has always been Selvane’s. Her cask opens at a table instead. She came to Morwal from Velyr as a ward, so small that Wendel says she was “no higher than a cask.”
Appearance
Tall, with brown hair braided tight down her back. On Opening day she wears a jacket pressed so sharp it could have stood up without her.
Personality
- Proud and competitive. She tells anyone who will listen that the walk through the court should have been hers: “Not some cellar boy who can’t find his way out of bed.”
- Dry with Ansel (“On time. Somebody mark the day.”), and the more polite she is, the more it stings.
- Fair in her way: she fills Ferra’s cup to the brim even after Ferra has been rude to her.
- Her whole face changes when someone asks about her work.
People in her life
- Wendel: her cellarer, who brags about her to anyone who will stand still.
- Ansel: the apprentice who walks the court in her place.
- Ferra: they trade barbs whenever they meet.
As the story unfolds
These details come from the story itself. Choose the last chapter you’ve read, and only what has been revealed up to that point will appear.
Her own cask
Morwal’s cask opens at a table a pace short of the light. Ansel finds it younger and brighter than Selvane’s, and very good, and tells her so. “It should have been in the light,” she says, and he can’t honestly answer. When one of Hessary’s buyers asks about her first mark, she tells him she chalked it herself and could barely reach the head.
Morwal’s gallery
On Opening night she tells Ansel that Hessary’s buyers want to see Morwal’s gallery, all four of them: “Nobody’s asked to see yours.” After the dancing she follows Wendel and three of the buyers through the gate with a stack of cups.
At the door
The next morning Ansel finds her dead on the floor just inside Morwal’s gallery door, her hand reaching toward the latch. Wendel is dead at the far end of the rack. On her cask, over her first mark, stand five cups: two drunk, three full and untouched.