Sahir Shessa is a lean, broad-shouldered human man with weathered bronze skin, vivid green eyes, and medium-length dark brown hair usually tied loosely at the nape. His face is angular, with a strong jaw and slightly prominent front teeth that show whenever he eats, grins, or laughs. He wears practical chain mail beneath a dark blue surcoat, keeps his shield close at hand, and carries himself like someone still trying to remember how a knight is supposed to stand. His most noticeable habit is checking the small iron ring around his left thumb whenever he is uncertain, turning it once, twice, then stopping as if embarrassed to have been caught.

Sahir is quick to smile, slow to trust, and incapable of ignoring someone being bullied by a stronger person. He presents himself as casual and irreverent, but watches every doorway and remembers every insignia. He wants companionship badly, though he disguises that need beneath teasing, bravado, and an insistence that he works better alone.

Sahir remembers almost nothing of his family. The earliest clear memory he possesses is of smoke rolling through a ruined border village and a boy's hand dragging him beneath a collapsed wagon. He was seven, feverish, and too weak to cry. The person who saved him was a wandering shrine-keeper named Nasiya, who carried him to safety, fed him from her own dwindling stores, and taught him that survival was not the same as living. Years later, Nasiya was murdered by the warlord whose soldiers had destroyed the village. Sahir arrived too late to save her, but found the iron ring she wore among the ashes. He has worn it ever since.