Sael'kael
The one frog in a salamander people: four feet, green and translucent, the heart seen beating through the chest. The transparency is a witness's whole credential. A Sael'kael cannot conceal anything on its person, cannot carry a blade, and can be seen to have carried nothing in, which is why no other kin is permitted to stand where one stands.
Where the Sael'mundvar is thought young and the Sael'mundmor is thought slow, the Sael'kael is not noticed to be in the room at all, until the accord is read back and every word of it is right. The law of the houses is that nothing sworn without a Sael'kael present was sworn.
Body
Four feet, green, and see-through: the heart visible working behind the ribs, and nothing else behind it. The people's broad flat face, wide lipless mouth and unblinking filmed eyes are all present, and so is the skin that must stay moist and that breathes, which in a body this thin is the whole surface of it.
They hear as their kin hear, which is to say not in air at all, through bone and through water and by laying a hand or the jaw flat against stone. At a Reading they have their hands on the table like everybody else and they are the one at the table for whom the posture is not a courtesy but the only way to hear the words they are there to remember.
Society
The five kin are the professions of a house and this one witnesses. The absolute taboo of the halls, that no weapon comes into a room where an accord is being made, is the one rule that keeps slow-eyed arbiters alive, and a body that can be seen to be empty is that rule wearing a face.
Every house cuts a stranger's palm at the door because the Tusiva can wear a Sael'mund's face and have. A Sael'kael cannot be worn. There is nowhere in one to put anything.
Regard
They are the least regarded and the most load-bearing thing in the people's law, and the houses are explicit about it: nothing sworn without one was sworn. Delegations forget a Sael'kael was there until the reading back, which is the point at which they stop forgetting.
Glass-skin, the translucent hide cured thin for lenses and for the windows of reliquaries, is legal and rare, and a Sael'kael's family will know the piece. That is the one line in the harvest that names a family.
Lore
Summary
Extended Lore
Still unwritten in the record for this entry.
- How long a Sael'kael lives
- Why a frog was laid into a salamander people
- What becomes of an accord sworn without one
- Who buys Glass-skin, and from whom