A petite young woman whose shoulders tend to tuck in against the rain, though her feet are always poised as if she might spring onto a ledge. Damp, jaw-length curls cling to her forehead; her quick half-smile appears and vanishes like a shutter in wind. She moves with a side-to-side rooftop balance, favoring her left foot on stairs and testing each surface with her weight before trusting it. In a room, her eyes go first to the ceiling corners, then the doors, then the people. Unexpectedly, she keeps a tiny rooftop garden of miniature herbs and flowering moss in old teacups, tending it with the care of a patient gardener.

Vela is quick to joke when frightened but stubbornly literal when someone makes a promise. She is self-reliant to the point of recklessness, yet tender toward anyone who has been overlooked. At work she is brisk and decisive; at rest she can grow restless and fidgety, while grief makes her unexpectedly still.

Vela grew up in the drainers' quarter, where her mother, Tiska, cleared roof channels for landlords and her father vanished on a river barge before Vela could remember his face. At eleven, a storm broke a neglected sluice above the quarter. Vela climbed out through a smoke vent and led three younger children across the roofs to the old bell tower, but her older brother Ketu stayed behind to lift a jammed grate and was swept away. She has never forgiven the city wardens who ignored the warning she had carried to them that morning. Now she maintains gutters and rain barrels for small tenants, passing along messages through the rooftops and quietly documenting which wealthy buildings divert floodwater onto poor streets. Her closest friend is Sesi, a retired stair-mender who taught her how to read a roof by its leaks. Her current trouble is that a property agent named Gorka has begun buying the drainers' homes and has noticed Vela's careful records.