Lysa Merrow

Lysa Merrow keeps the Muster Rolls with the patience of a knife. She knows which noble districts under-serve, which poor streets over-answer, which carts are hidden before inspection, and which patriotic speeches collapse when counted. Her office smells of wax, vellum, lamp oil, rain-wet cloaks, and old resentment. Lysa does not hate privilege; she hates arithmetic that pretends not to notice it. Her reforms are beautiful to the exhausted and dreadful to the comfortable, because they make obligation measurable enough to accuse.