Petite and wiry, Siv stands as if a sudden gust might send her springing onto the rail rather than off balance. Rain beads on her jaw-length dark-brown curls, which cling in comma-shaped strands to her flushed ivory cheeks. Her hazel eyes catch amber around the pupils, quick to measure a stairway or a stranger's hands. A guarded half-smile appears and vanishes before it can be mistaken for trust. She moves lightly on the balls of her feet, shoulders tucked close, with the alert economy of someone who has spent years navigating crowded roofs. Within a minute of meeting her, most people notice that she repeatedly turns the tiny brass swallow charm at her cuff until its beak points toward the nearest exit.

Siv is alert and resourceful, yet privately frightened that her quick decisions may fail someone again. With strangers she is brisk, wry, and sparing with trust; with children and neighbors she becomes patient and unexpectedly playful. When she is tired, she talks too fast and tries to turn every concern into a list of tasks. When angry, she becomes stubbornly direct and stops making jokes.

Siv grew up in the cramped rooms above a drainwright's shop near the old-city rooftops. Her mother, a seamstress, taught her to mend cloth; her father taught her which roof channels would hold a person's weight and which would collapse into the kitchens below. At sixteen, during a week of flood rains, a blocked culvert sent water into the low tenements. Siv found a maintenance hatch that could have opened a dry escape route, but she froze when she heard the rush of water. Her younger brother Bruk and several neighbors were trapped until a rooftop gardener, Txan, forced the hatch from the other side. No one died, but the delay left Bruk with a lasting limp. Siv began mapping the district's drains afterward, turning her shame into practical knowledge and quietly delivering food to the families who lost their homes. Now the city plans to seal several old channels for a wealthy builder. Siv suspects the work will redirect floodwater into the same low streets, but she has no proof and fears that another public warning will be dismissed as panic. She still loves Bruk, who wants her to stop taking risks, and owes Txan more than either of them likes to discuss.