Yrsa Flintvoice is a diplomat and contract judge of the Deep Anvil Compact and the architect of the Three Bridges Accord: a growing web of limited mutual-defense agreements among Stonebound, Skeldr, Eilvaren and Hearthkin, meant to stand against the Crown of Ash without ever raising a new permanent ruler in its place. Her name comes from her voice, clear and hard, which carries across a hall without ever being raised.
Appearance
Yrsa is a compact, solidly built woman in her middle years, with fair, heavily freckled skin, a strong straight nose and a wide mouth used to speaking over a room. Her copper-red hair is cut short for travel and braided close to her head, except for one thin braid behind her right ear tied off with a bead of knapped black flint. Her gray-green eyes are very direct, and she holds a gaze a moment longer than courtesy requires, as if waiting for the other side to read the clause again. She dresses for the road between holds: a dark green-black wool coat with a high collar, a fur-lined cloak, a sealed leather document case at her belt. At her neck hangs a small token carved from a single gray stone, three bridges joined in one span, and she wears several plain iron oath rings on one hand, one for every agreement she is personally bound to see through.
What she believes
Yrsa loves law that binds the strong as tightly as the weak, and that everyone at the table can read. She knows the peoples of Myrvand cannot face the Crown alone, and she fears what they might become together. A coalition with no end date, or a single commander above all who swore to it, would simply be another empire. So every agreement she drafts carries a day on which it expires, and she reads that date aloud before anyone signs.
Her place in the story
In her treaty halls, Skeldr captains, Eilvaren envoys and Hearthkin speakers sit among Stonebound delegates, each with a copy of the same text in a different hand. Her method needs allies who can fight, and that is exactly what makes them dangerous to it. She needs arms for the Accord, but Hesta Thunderforge decides what those arms may be. Dorrik Ironmemory's records give her treaties their evidence. She is pressing for rules that would make the arms and ore trade traceable, and Keld Marrbreaker profits every time her law moves more slowly than the war. The closest living model of what she is trying to build is the bounded, temporary authority of the Greenfold, where Mara Brambleheart has shown that a people can act together without crowning anyone. Whether law can keep pace with war is the question Yrsa has staked everything on.