A slight, sharp-featured human with weathered olive skin, gray-green eyes, and cropped black hair streaked with premature silver. Their narrow frame looks unassuming beneath a battered leather coat, though every movement is measured and alert. A thin scar crosses the left eyebrow, and their fingers are stained with ink, soot, and old lock grease.

Quietly observant and dryly humorous, Mara notices small inconsistencies that others overlook. She is suspicious of authority, unexpectedly protective of desperate people, and more comfortable in a dangerous alley than at a respectable dinner.

Mara Venn grew up in the crowded alleys behind the counting houses of a prosperous river city. Her parents were honest laborers who disappeared after a merchant accused them of stealing a shipment they never touched. With no one willing to hear a poor family's protests, Mara survived by carrying messages, lifting purses, and learning which doors were protected by locks and which were protected by people. A retired burglar named Old Sable noticed that Mara watched more than she spoke, and taught her the patient arts of concealment, misdirection, and escape. Mara eventually joined a small criminal crew that specialized in retrieving dangerous documents and exposing corrupt officials. The work suited her until the crew's leader sold them out to the same merchant families who had ruined her parents. Mara escaped with a ledger proving the betrayal, but Old Sable was captured and presumed dead. Now she travels under false names, taking discreet jobs while searching for the surviving members of her old network. She wants justice, but she has learned that justice is often just another word powerful people use when they have already won.