Kassy's short brown hair curls outward around her ears, as if it has been shaped by heat and impatient trimming. Her pale skin is freckled with tiny soot-dark specks that never quite wash away. She stands with her weight on the balls of her feet, always half-turned toward the nearest exit or workbench. Her yellow dress is bright but faded at the seams, and her dark jacket has been carefully patched at both elbows with mismatched pieces of sturdy cloth. The jacket's left pocket is conspicuously over-cared-for: polished smooth, mended with tiny even stitches, and kept buttoned even in the heat of the forge. She moves with a clerk's quick, economical precision, but her eyes follow every hammer blow as if counting it.

Kassy is warm with children and brisk with adults who waste time. She wants to believe people can be better than their debts, yet keeps careful records because experience has taught her that goodwill does not pay rent. In a calm room she jokes readily and asks after everyone's meals; under pressure she becomes sharply organized, assigning tasks and naming costs. When she is hurt, she works harder instead of admitting it.

Kassy Askel grew up above a small smithy, learning letters from invoices and sums from the price of iron. Her mother, an elf who repaired farm tools, taught her to judge a tool by the way it sat in a person's hand; her human father left when Kassy was young, and never returned from a merchant caravan. Years ago, a furnace accident trapped her younger brother, Toma, behind a jammed service door. Kassy broke the lock with a sledge and dragged him out, but the smith who employed her lost two fingers and the shop nearly closed. Since then she has kept the accounts and orders at the smithy called Bent Nail, a local name shortened from the old sign, 'Bend the nail before it bends you.' She is mother to Neri, a bright, stubborn child who asks why every blade needs a price. The shop's owner, Drazek, is behind on rent, and a new supplier is demanding payment for a shipment that arrived half short. Kassy is trying to keep the shop open without letting her child see how close the household is to losing its rooms.