Saahir moves like a slow reed in a twilight wind: deliberate, balanced, each step measured as if counting syllables of an incantation. Her robes are layered parchment-brown silk that rustles faintly, patterned with tiny, embroidered jade serpents whose eyes are specks of copper thread. She keeps a folded leather satchel across her chest crammed with tiny slips, seals, and a narrow iron stylus. Her hands are mottled with age but quick and precise; ink stains have seeped into the pale ridges of her fingertips. Atop her head sits a thin silver circlet, tarnished, set not with gems but with a sliver of baked, ambered glass—an ember from a funeral pyre she refuses to burn. Contradiction: although she is diminutive and usually still, when angered or excited she straightens to an unexpected, almost regal posture and her voice becomes sharp and fleet.