Sava is a tall, draconic humanoid whose onyx scales have the polished depth of wet stone. Fine aurora-colored veins shift between green, violet, and cold blue beneath the scales at his temples, throat, and knuckles. He moves with the economical glide of someone used to narrow carriage aisles, never turning his back on a doorway. A little brass counting-frame is always clipped inside his coat; one corner is worn nearly smooth where his thumb rubs it while he listens. In a room, his gaze goes first to hands, then to exits, and only last to faces. The unexpected detail: he keeps a tiny clay whistle shaped like a marsh frog, and blows it softly to summon stray cats.

Sava is attentive and courteous when he wants information, but he distrusts effortless charm and keeps a mental record of every promise. He can show genuine patience with frightened people and then make a cold, practical decision on their behalf. In private, he is unexpectedly playful with animals and old mechanical toys. Under pressure, his courtesy does not vanish; it becomes more exact, as if every word were a clause in a contract.

Sava was raised in House Khaevyr, a noble family whose public reputation rests on preserving old treaties and whose private craft is the collection of secrets. As a young clerk, he was sent to audit a remote caravan route and found that the route's captives were being kept in conditions his family had long pretended not to notice. He tried to halt the trade through procedure and petition. The caravan departed anyway, and a fever outbreak later killed dozens of captives before his papers could catch up. That failure taught him that polished words without control of the road are only decoration. He took over the family's caravan interests and made them efficient, telling himself that tighter records and fewer abuses could keep worse people from taking charge. Now a celestial alignment has been interpreted by Khaevyr's shadow archivists as requiring a Hodne sacrifice. Sava has been tasked with delivering the chosen Hodne, Jadi, who escaped. He hunts Jadi while quietly searching for a way to invalidate the prophecy without admitting his part in making its machinery possible. His sister, Sethi, still believes he can be brought back to the family's public ideals; his old route-master, Draz, believes Sava has grown soft. Sava's current problem is that both may be right, and the alignment is approaching.