Dusan

Dusan is the land steward of the Berezov estate. He has worked under Lazar for the length of Lazar's tenure, which is to say for longer than Andrei has been the lord. He knows the estate better than the estate knows itself. When Andrei was gone and the land was failing and delegations were arriving from the settlements, it was Dusan who received them and Dusan who kept the ledgers and Dusan who told the young lord, when the lord finally came home with a black eye and a bruised jaw, that the people needed to see their lord. He said it like a man who had been waiting for permission to say it. He does not ask questions when Lazar uses that voice. He sent the letter to the mill by back route without asking who it was for. He came down the slope at a run and caught the fourth masked man by the collar and drove him face-first into the mud. He is the kind of man who appears exactly when needed and says exactly what needs saying and asks nothing for either.

He carries a ledger the way other men carry a sword. He looks at people the way a steward learns to look: not at the face but at what the face is working to not show.

Steady. Loyal. He has been doing this long enough that the competence has become invisible. The estate functions because Dusan ensures it functions and nobody fully notices until something threatens to stop it.