Jito

Jito's parlor sits two staircases below the marketplace, in a room that does not appear on any official map of Alpenglow. The room is lined in velvet, walls and floor and ceiling, and is the only warm space in the city.

She runs an auction. The auction has one rule: if you wish a particular letter to be read by a particular Leader in a particular window, you bid, and the highest bid is read. The lower bids are not read, and the bidders pay nothing. This is fair, she will tell you. The unfair version, she will tell you, is what happened before her parlor existed, when the Couriers brawled in the street.

Ninety-two percent of the city's Leaders have done business in her parlor. The remaining eight percent are mostly Anatolia.