Vera is the Keeper of the Common Measure and mistress of The Ravenmere, Albion’s most respected village inn. Composed, perceptive and quietly commanding, she provides neutral ground where travellers, villagers and strangers from distant roads may meet beneath one roof.

Vera tolerates neither dishonest measures nor unpaid debts, and no troublemaker receives a second warning. Her meticulous accounts have exposed false levies, invented shortages and several of Mendacius’s more creative explanations for missing coin. Yet The Ravenmere guards mysteries of its own. Behind its oldest hearth lies a sealed doorway whose key has hung at Vera’s waist since she inherited the inn—and recently, something on the other side has begun knocking after midnight.