Brann Dock-Quill

Brann Dock-Quill keeps the ledger alcove the way a bartender keeps a back room — not hidden, just understood. He's eighty-nine, which for a dwarf is young enough to still be eager and old enough to know better, and he wears the plain ash-and-iron beadwork of a junior clerk who copies lines he isn't yet trusted to judge.

He meets offworld crews at the berth side-door with coffee and a schedule, not a handshake that commits anyone to anything. His job is to book courtesy-audit windows when both clans have agreed — or when someone he owes a favor asks nicely and the line isn't on Halda Stone-Braid's personal watch list. Brann owed Sela Iron-Tally a debt from six seasons on a Khesret orbital: she caught a factor shaving his indenture tally and never mentioned it to his clan-mother. He pays debts. This is how.

He'll walk you into the alcove, point at the carbon-slate plate for Stone-Braid / Ash-Braid season 77.041, and tell you the rules in one breath: copy clean, witness bead on the counter, no plates leave the niche, and if Hold-Reeve Halda's iron-grey beadwork appears in the curtain gap you smile like you belong there. He is not a revolutionary. He's a clerk who believes courtesy audits are real and theft is rude — and who hopes the hull Sela sent can tell the difference.