Sareth Vhun

Sareth Vhun keeps the Furnace Levy through tablets, depot ledgers, punishment lists, and a memory for villages that paid late during bad winters. Soldiers do not love her, but they eat because her numbers arrive before hunger does. Her office smells of wax, soot, dried grain, iron dust, and exhausted messengers. Sareth believes compassion that cannot count supplies is only decoration. Her moral cost is severe: every ration saved for an army may be a child unfed, and every child unfed may become a province taught to hate with discipline.