War-Chief Vashruk

The current holder of the Kiln, and therefore recognized by the Kingdom, titled by the Kingdom, and largely ignored by it. He is the fourth holder in sixty years. He has stated publicly that he intends to be the last, which is either an ambition to unify the Emberwaste or a threat to burn it down, and he has declined to clarify.

In Person

Big, scarred, and quieter than expected. He listens through an entire proposal without interrupting, which unnerves Salamander petitioners used to being cut off, and he asks about logistics before he asks about honor. He drinks water in front of guests, deliberately, in a province where the gesture is a statement about who controls the springs.

He is not a brute and does not benefit from being thought one, and he has stopped correcting the impression.

History

He took the Kiln at forty by doing something no Emberwaste war-chief had tried: he besieged it rather than storming it, cut the water rather than the walls, and accepted the garrison's surrender on terms he then honored. The terms were the innovation. Two-thirds of that garrison is still in the Kiln and still under arms, which is why he has held three years where his predecessors averaged fifteen months.

The Kingdom sent him a title. He kept the courier waiting a day, accepted, and sent back a request for a survey of the walking vents, which the Legation has not answered.

Method

Water, terms, and time. He holds the province's largest spring and has never used it as a weapon, which has cost him two campaigns and bought him something no war-chief has had: neighbors who will negotiate rather than fortify. His long project is to make the holding hereditary, and everyone can see it, and the argument in the Emberwaste is no longer whether he is trying but whether it would be worse than the alternative.

He knows about the Legation's brief — that the Kingdom's actual instruction is to prevent any war-chief consolidating more than a third of the province. He has not said so publicly. He is waiting for a moment when saying so will do the most work.

Household

His son, Kheth. Nineteen, competent, and the entire question. Recognized as heir by his father's house, by nobody else, and by the Kingdom explicitly not.

The Kiln Garrison. Two-thirds inherited from the people he took it from. Their loyalty is to the terms rather than to him, which he understands better than they do.

The Cinderhold Contracts. The glass guilds sell to everyone and arm nobody, and Vashruk has been the first holder in memory not to try to break that neutrality. It has made him the only faction Cinderhold will extend credit to.

Relations

Wary alliance with the Ninespring Compact, whose whole constitutional purpose is to stop somebody doing exactly what he is doing. Formal, cold, and mutually informed with the Kingdom's Legation.

He has had two conversations with a Deep Song delegation of sand-swimmers, at night, unwitnessed. He has told nobody, and one of the two Salamanders alive who knows where the Sung Water is, is him.

Reputation

In the Emberwaste: the man who kept his word to a beaten garrison, which is worth more out there than any victory. In the capital: a competent provincial who is approaching the threshold, and whose file has been moved to a different shelf.

Hooks

• The Legation must formally refuse to recognize Kheth as heir. Somebody has to carry that refusal into the Kiln, and the Legation is hiring outsiders because its own people have families.
• The walking vents have changed direction, and the survey Vashruk requested three years ago would have said so.
• The Deep Song asks the party to carry their claim to the Kiln — to the whole province — because no Salamander will hear it from a beetle. Vashruk will hear it. What he does next is the campaign.
• One of the Ninespring Compact holds starts buying glass in quantity. Vashruk knows what that means and has three weeks to decide whether to strike first or prove he is not that kind of holder.

"He drank water in front of me for a quarter of an hour and never once mentioned the spring. I understood him perfectly."