Sixty Heartbeats

Ilse Marrow

Victim NPC

Clockwarden of Vesperhold for twenty years and the ritual Witness — the one soul kept awake through every Save to verify the world. Found strangled at the foot of the escapement at 12:00:00 last night, inside the…

Apprentice Corum

Suspect

Ilse's apprentice and next in the Witness line; a careful, devout young man who has served the tower since he was nine. Visibly shattered by his mistress's death — he has not left the tower since the body was found.

Baker Hommel

Suspect

The town baker, big-handed and gentle, flour on his sleeves even today. His wife lies sick in the tower vestry by the Warden's charity, and he has haunted the stairs between ovens and cots for a year.

Mayor Tessa Vayne

Suspect

Mayor of Vesperhold and chair of the committee to decommission the Meridian Clock. Crisp, popular, and openly tired of 'losing a minute of every life, every night.' She entered the tower yesterday evening for reasons…

Pilgrim Sorrel

Witness

A gaunt pilgrim of the Order of the Blink, three weeks in Vesperhold. Preaches that the Save is God's eyelid closing and that every unsanctioned waker walks behind God's eyelid. Watches everyone; eats almost nothing.

Nyla Marrow

Suspect

Ilse's estranged daughter, back inside the tower for the first time in six years. Inherits her mother's keys, her mother's rooms, and whatever her mother's ledger says. Sharp-tongued, dry-eyed, and already counting.

Archivist Pemberly

Witness

Keeper of the Archive of Etchings — ten thousand plates, one for every midnight. Dry, precise, unreadable. Nothing enters or leaves the archive without her stamp, and she has held the stamp for thirty years.

Fetch

Suspect

A wiry odd-jobs runner nobody remembers hiring, one year in Vesperhold. Quick with locks, quicker with exits. Was in the tower last night 'delivering flour' — though nobody ordered flour, and bakers deliver their own.

Widow Grasse

Suspect

The tanner's widow, in mourning cloth nine years old. Keeps to the vestry and the chapel candles. Owes, by her own account, 'some small sums' around town. Her husband is not buried: he stands among the Stilled in the…

Doctor Ambrose Keel

Suspect

Physician and natural philosopher; treats the Stilled in the bellows crypt and sits — to some raised eyebrows — on the Mayor's decommission committee as its medical assessor. Was first to examine the Warden's body at…

Lamplighter Ossian

Witness

Has lit the tower's lamps for forty years; the guild's oldest servant. Swears on his mother's etching-plate that he once woke mid-Save, unsold and unpaid — a claim nobody has let him forget or believe.

Magistrate Rowe

Detective

Crown Magistrate of the vale, summoned at dawn. Must certify the death and, before tonight's midnight, either a culprit or a verdict of misadventure. The first magistrate in history whose every suspect owns the…