Sheila is arrestingly beautiful in the way of a portrait that has been handled too often: flawless at first glance, then unsettlingly precise. Her deep garnet skin has a satin sheen, with fine lines gathering at the corners of her eyes and a faint, branching pattern of darker red at her temples. Two horns spiral upward from her brow, ridged like old olive wood and polished smooth where her fingers habitually trace them. She moves with a dancer's economy, never hurrying, turning her shoulders before her hips as if inviting the room to follow. Her hands are broad-knuckled and stained at the fingertips with ink and instrument polish, the hands of a woman who has spent decades tuning strings, writing contracts, and lifting other people's valuables. In company, her gaze travels first to exits and windows, then to the person with the least power in the room. The impression she leaves is that of a cherished jewel displayed in a locked case, and she knows exactly who holds the key.

Sheila is tenderly attentive when someone is useful or unexpectedly honest, then ruthlessly dismissive when they ask for loyalty. She can enjoy a clever joke and a quiet meal, yet interprets unearned kindness as either a trap or an insult. In a crowded salon she is luminous and generous with attention; when alone after a failure, she becomes brisk, practical, and unable to sit still. She believes beauty is the only currency the world has ever accepted from her, even as she resents everyone who pays her in it.

Sheila grew up in a comfortable household above her parents' music shop in the village of Tesk. Her mother taught her the lute; her father taught her to keep careful accounts and never mistake a compliment for kindness. For a time, the village prized her performances. That changed after a fever swept through Tesk and a frightened preacher blamed the tiefling child whose songs had once been welcomed. Her parents sent her away to protect her, but Sheila remembers the villagers' faces at the gate more clearly than her family's tearful goodbye. Years later, she returned as a celebrated performer and found that her parents had died, their shop occupied by the same neighbors who had denounced her. She took back her mother's lute and the deeds hidden beneath its soundboard, then began using her performances to seduce, rob, and ruin those who had profited from her exile. The first theft was meant to recover her inheritance. The next was revenge. Now she is entangled with a circle of wealthy patrons called the Kettle-and-Goat, an uneasy merger of two rival salons, and is searching for an angelic relic said to belong to a winged healer named Joram. Her former accompanist, Dagan, knows she sometimes spares the poor and fears he will reveal that this mercy still exists.