Oswy Hebden

Role Master of the Worshipful Company of Sealwrights Status alive Age 71

The Master of the Sealwrights is a small, exact man with ink on the side of his right hand that has not washed off in fifty years. He wears the Company’s grey gown with the wax-red hood, and he pauses before he answers any question, as if checking it for loopholes.

Who he is

Hebden has held the Company’s seal for twenty-six years. In that time nothing in the Wax Vaults has gone missing. He says so often. He will also tell you, if pressed, that he signed Iveth Ammerly’s expulsion and would do it again, and that he was wrong about the clause she found.

What he wants

For the theft of the rent clause to be solved quietly, inside the Hall, before the rest of the vale learns that the Sealwrights lost the one document that mattered. He wants the missing apprentice, Jory Penwarden, found and brought back alive, and he means both halves of that.

Dealings with the Wardens

He met them in the entrance court of Sealwright Hall on the morning of day 3, read Queen Hesper’s commission twice, and let them into the Wax Vaults with Clemency Vare as their guide. When the lease-case was opened and the page was found cut, he sat down on the vault stairs and did not speak for some time. When he did, it was to name the missing apprentice. Then he asked Iveth, formally, to repeat her opinion on the cut. It was the first time he had addressed her by name in twenty years.