Serjeant Aubrey Fenn

The Rows watch's serjeant since 4609: he recruits from the pit villages, changes the night's walk every week by a method he has never explained, and has kept the Rows unbreached.

Aubrey Fenn has held the serjeancy of the Rows watch since 4609 and is the most professional officer in Sarrum. He recruits from the pit villages rather than the city, because a man from Blackdown has no cousins in Hollowgate, and changes the pattern of the night walk every week by a method his own men have never been told.

He has dismissed four watchmen in nine years, all for drink and none for dishonesty, and has twice refused a hall's request to dismiss a fifth. The insurers call him obstructive. The halls pay him, and the halls hold that he is why the Rows have not been breached since 4489.

A company hired by an insurer is hired against him and should know it. The approach that has worked is to ask Fenn what he cannot see, accept the answer, and go and look.

In person

Lean, wiry and past fifty, with greying close-cut hair and a penetrating stare. He wears a plain, well-kept watch coat and carries a lantern, a notebook and nothing decorative.