Skrubb

• Build & height: 1.85 m, broad, barrel-chested, built like a man who has carried a lot of buckets.
• Face: wide, red-cheeked, open, permanently a little puzzled; mouth always mid-shout. Serene when the noise is at its worst, "because he hears nothing at all."
• Hair: sandy, thinning, flattened by a cap.
• Eyes: pale blue, cheerful, squinting at lips he's trying to read.
• Clothing, layer by layer: the Cleaners' uniform, black-and-white and printed like the columns of a page, cut long as a Chief's coat · white gloves · a cap · at his belt, a brass ear-trumpet on a hook (he carries a spare: in ch. 213 he has "a new brass ear-trumpet", and loses that one too).
• Signature item: the brass ear-trumpet, pointed not at his ear but at the fight.
• Movement: plants himself at the top of a stair and aims the trumpet like a cannon. He reads lips, misses half of them, and turns in circles when things happen behind him.
• Voice: bellowing, all capitals, "much too loud, the way the deaf do" (ch. 209). His balloons are big, jagged-edged, ALL CAPS, overlapping other people's. Everything he amplifies is drawn as SFX the size of the panel.
• Variant looks: Broadcasting (ch. 209, 213: trumpet raised high, a wall of SFX pouring out of it). Frozen (ch. 209 splash: on the stair inside Isa's hold, trumpet raised, every SFX hanging solid and silent in the air around him). Disarmed (ch. 209: looking at his empty hand, "…WHAT HAPPENED?"). Two halves (ch. 213: holding his cut trumpet, outraged).

Every sound he hears comes out ten times louder.

• The writ, broadcast. Outside her Vault, Solvig's ERASURE WRIT must be read aloud and heard. A Cleaner reads it into his trumpet, and the whole of Glasheim hears it: "THE WHOLE OF GLASHEIM HEARS IT! A WRIT THAT'S HEARD IS A WRIT THAT LANDS!" (ch. 213). That's how writs land en masse outside the Vault. The letters of the name lift off the page like ash and go looking for what they name.
• What it can't do: amplify stopped sound: in Isa's hold, "stopped things make no sound", and the wall of noise cuts off (ch. 209). Work in the Silence at Void-II's rim, where no sound exists. Work without the trumpet (Rougeina cut it, ch. 213). Let a writ find a misfiled thing (Oswin misfiled himself: the ash letters O-S-W-I-N circled and fell as dust, ch. 213). Let a writ touch ∞−1 or Mingus (the writ's own limits). Make himself hear.
• SFX: everything, ten times bigger: WHAAAAAAAMMMMM; a broadcast writ in balloons that fill the corridor; then, in a hold, the same letters frozen solid and silent.

• Tempo: 260.
• Home tempo: Glasheim's stone passages, where every sound already echoes before he makes it ten times louder.
• Burn cost (HADOM OVERFLOW): every sound passes through him first, which is why he is stone deaf. Under burn the sound has nowhere to go but into his body: his bones ring like a struck bell, his nose bleeds into the cotton. Past his ceiling, the tenfold heartbeats come back through the trumpet into his own heart, and it is the one sound that could overflow him, the one he hasn't heard in twenty years.

He is stone deaf. Every sound passes through him first, and has done for twenty years: "I haven't heard a thing in twenty years!" He never hears what a writ does when it lands. He never hears who he's shouting at. "NOBODY TELLS ME ANYTHING!"

• Stillness. Isa: "…Then nothing makes a sound." …ba— In her hold the noise stops dead; the crew walk through the frozen SFX, pluck the trumpet out of his hand and disarm his squad (ch. 209 splash).
• The trumpet. Rougeina Swapped with a drifting flake of ash from a failed writ, landed behind him and sliced the trumpet in half ("THAT WAS MY GOOD ONE!", ch. 213).
• The misfiled: a writ can't find what isn't filed (Oswin, ch. 213).
• Mingus: his own grey hounds lay down round the dog with their tails thumping (Vigolas: "…I think we've got dogs now." Kompis: "Mingus has got dogs now.").
• How he was beaten: ch. 209, the hold and the stolen trumpet; the Cleaners retreated up the stair, dragging Skrubb, who was still shouting. Ch. 213, the trumpet cut in half, the writ failed, the crew through the black door to the Vault. Never killed.

• The brass ear-trumpets (at least two; "my good one" was the second).
• Cotton in both ears.
• The Cleaners (CLEANER · K-III TESTED · the Null Protocol): page-printed black-and-white uniforms, white gloves, writ-readers.
• Grey hounds, lean and colourless, whose bites grey stone: several defected to Mingus, "the first dog they couldn't grey".

• Wants: to do the job properly: a writ heard is a writ that lands.
• Fears: nothing he can hear about.
• Contradictions: the loudest man in the Order can't hear a thing; the chief of a corps of erasers is the cheeriest man in Glasheim, because he has never heard what they do.
• Humour: pure accident, all capitals. "…WHAT HAPPENED? NOBODY TELLS ME ANYTHING!" Oswin, on him: "He can't hear a word I say. It's quite restful."
• Habits: shouts; reads lips badly; polishes his trumpet; keeps a spare.
• Alone: sits in perfect silence and doesn't know it's silent.

• Solvig: his Architect; "BY ORDER OF THE SECOND CHAIR!"
• Oswin: the man he shouted at, who found him "quite restful", and misfiled himself out from under his writ.
• Isa: the stillness that switched his power off.
• Rougeina: the flake of ash behind him, and the end of his good trumpet.
• Mingus: stole his dogs.
• Vider: the Silence he couldn't enter.
• Sigvat: his predecessor as the Protocol's great voice (Sigvat paid in years; Skrubb pays in hearing).
• Tihi: her giggle can't reach anyone who can't hear, so he is one of the few people in the Current immune to it.

• "OSWIN DRAEKHOLM! BY ORDER OF THE SECOND CHAIR! YOU WILL SURRENDER THE MISFILED INDEX AND COME TO THE VAULT!" (ch. 209)
• "LOUD! EVERYTHING I HEAR IS LOUD! AND I HAVEN'T HEARD A THING IN TWENTY YEARS!" (ch. 209)
• "…WHAT HAPPENED? NOBODY TELLS ME ANYTHING!" (ch. 209)
• "THE WHOLE OF GLASHEIM HEARS IT! A WRIT THAT'S HEARD IS A WRIT THAT LANDS!" (ch. 213)
• "WHERE DID HE GO? READ IT AGAIN!" (ch. 213)
• "THAT WAS MY GOOD ONE!" (ch. 213)