Heda is a 5-foot-8-inch human woman with a kind, firm expression and a practical, weather-ready presence. Her warm brown skin is lightly dusted with flour most mornings. Her broad jaw and slightly crowded front teeth show whenever she bites into a heel of bread; she chews with deliberate care, as though judging the crumb. She walks with an even, heel-first stride, balancing a basket that weighs about 18 pounds as if it were part of her. People tend to notice her steady gaze and the way she can look welcoming without looking easy to push around.

Heda is generous but not soft-headed: she will feed a stranger and still ask what brought them to town. She is patient with fear and poverty, but sharp with entitlement. In a calm market she jokes easily; under pressure she becomes brisk and decisive. Afterward, she privately doubts whether firmness was necessary or simply easier than admitting she was frightened.

Heda grew up helping her mother bake for travelers at a roadside oven. At nineteen, a flood ruined the village grain store, and the neighbors argued over who should receive the last flour. Heda broke into the locked storehouse and divided it by household, an act that earned her a night in the watch house and the lasting trust of families who had been overlooked. Years later, she took over a small bread stall and began quietly setting aside food for people who could not pay. Her brother Jori, a ferryman, thinks she gives away too much; her apprentice Tavi admires her but has started copying her habit of taking risks. Now a tax collector is demanding payment for old market fees, and Heda is trying to keep her stall open without turning the neighborhood against itself.