Hellsborough Exposed — minor-characters

Mold's "I work alone" doesn't last long once the commissioner sets a real condition on the job:

"And there is one other condition," added the commissioner.

"Which is?"

"Willow will accompany you."

"I work alone, just me and Kibble."

"Then how will you recognise our people?"

"You are genetically distinct from any people I've ever seen — the red hair, the sallow skin, your eyes. You all have these traits."

"True, but this is the condition," said the commissioner with finality.

"And if I can't help," added Willow, "then at least I can watch your back. I know the Wisewood and the netherlands better than anyone."

Seven of them follow me about, and I have taken to numbering them: number one works at the Rivelin school and passes me on the road most days without acknowledgement, though a smile will get a smile back, and in all that time our eyes have never once actually met. Number six is stilted and accented, which had me down as a fellow off-worlder until I found her at the muscle-fibre charging station staring at me with something very close to desperation. Number two has not been seen in weeks, and I suspect the replacement is the chatty new fellow who has lately been everywhere I am; I can be extraordinarily slow.

Hester is the keeper of the church adjacent to Hellsborough's civic hall — a building older than the Wisewood and older than the town, which predates everything around it including, apparently, the vocabulary needed to describe its purpose. Tom Calver's psycmask attempted to translate her role and produced tender, then warden, then a compound that dissolved before he could read it, and then nothing. Her explanation was that the role predates the notation, and any correct translation would need a word that either hasn't been coined yet or once existed and doesn't any more.

The Strinxin are a xin faction distinguished from the Stanningxin by different metal and ornaments — primarily shrunken skulls and dried hands hung from the chest, worn in the manner of trophies. Their commanding chieftain is Ridgimoor, young, heavily scarred; his lieutenant Cragimold, older and more marked, captured Van on the moor wearing Stanningxin metal and recommended he be killed immediately at the great games. Ridgimoor countermanded this. Cragimold received the decision poorly.