Baruusha
The Baruusha is a kit that was taken out of the water in its first winter, put to the ledger, taught to read three tongues and taught to wash. Everything that follows from that is visible in the body, which is the point: a kit taken off wood early and raised on grain and meat grows differently, and the Baruusha body is the proof of the culture's own thesis written in a shape nobody finds flattering.
They live downstream, among the payers, and they are the part of a house that other peoples actually deal with.
Body
Sleeker, longer in the face, coarse in the whisker, lighter in the bone, and the only Baruush who wash. The teeth are still the teeth and still have to be worn, but a Baruusha has usually never gnawed a course of timber in his life and rasps them instead, and he is reminded of the difference every spring.
The senses are the house senses and they are poor in air: beyond forty yards a Baruusha sees a smear with a size to it, which is one reason a factor's business is done across a table at arm's length in a room, and why nobody has ever thought this odd.
Society
They are the Factors of a house. They run the coin, the loans, the bribes, the informers and the quiet purchase of mills and ferries that the house will later have no need to flood. They live downstream in town houses with clean floors, and they alone among the Baruush wear cloth.
A Baruusha speaks three or four tongues and will often soften his house name at the ends when working among other peoples, and is mocked at home for it. He is brought home every spring to be weighed with everyone else. Their own houses trust them exactly as far as the beam says, and they know the figure, because they keep the books it is written in.
Regard
Downstream a factor is the acceptable face of a people whose other faces are a Gate-Keeper with a file and a Breaker with a keystone on a chain. He is polite, he keeps a washed step, he explains the Turn in the dry market square, and he is trusted absolutely within the terms of the deal, because a Baruush who has been paid delivers every time and not one hour past the bargain.
At home the clean step is the joke. A Baruusha is a litter-mate who was taken off wood, and everyone at the Weighing can see what that made of him.
Lore
Summary
Extended Lore
Still unwritten in the record for this entry.
- Which three or four tongues a factor is taught, since the Baruush have none of their own
- Whether a Baruusha has ever become Baron of the Beam, given that he cannot top a chest
- What happens to a factor whose town is put under the Plug while he is living in it