Orrath
A Penitent who hunts readers
A Penitent — an order older than the current priesthood, older than the law of the Lowered Eye, serving something the priests would rather not name. She has been in the Pale for days longer than Penitents usually stay, which means she is being methodical, and means she intends to be certain. Where the Listeners hunt the sounding of Signs, Orrath hunts something rarer and, to her, far more dangerous.
Description
Orrath moves with a long, unhurried stride and a doctrinal patience that has not softened in however many generations the Penitents have been at their work. She is not an inquisitor of the Order's kind; the Penitents predate the Order and answer to an older fear. That she has lingered in the Pale rather than leaving is, to everyone who understands what she came for, deeply unreassuring.
Maren first senses her not as a face but as a trace — the routes between scriptorium and cellar all walked recently by someone with a longer stride. Orrath is close, and closing, and whatever Maren means to do she must do before the Penitent understands exactly what she has found.