Cadd is a compact, square-shouldered woman with weather-browned skin and a close-cropped cap of iron-gray curls that stand up where her helmet presses them. Her coat is thick, patched, and shiny at the elbows from years of leaning over maps; its hem smells faintly of rain-soaked wool and lamp oil. She walks with a measured, slightly pigeon-toed tread, placing each boot as if testing a floorboard. Within a minute, most people notice her habit of touching the little wooden whistle at her collar before she gives an order. Unexpected for a hard-nosed company captain, she keeps a tiny pressed yellow flower tucked inside her field manual, changing it each spring.

Cadd is decisive about immediate danger but uneasy with decisions whose costs fall on someone absent. She can be blunt and exacting on duty, yet unexpectedly patient with frightened people who are trying honestly. When rested, she jokes in a dry, almost wry way; when exhausted, she reduces every conversation to orders and forgets to ask how anyone is holding up.

Cadd grew up hauling freight through the rain-cut roads around the market town of Oruva. She learned routes before letters, and learned that a frightened driver can be more dangerous than a bandit. At nineteen she joined the Merrit Company as a wagon guard, a name the company kept from its founders' far-off homeland, where it sounds like a blessing. During a winter evacuation, a panicked order from a superior sent her team through a flooded culvert. Cadd disobeyed, led the wagons over a longer ridge road, and saved most of the passengers, but one guard drowned while holding the culvert entrance. She has commanded ever since, insisting that orders be clear and force be accounted for. She gives Ravairo the difficult jobs because she trusts his nerve, but requires him to explain every use of force afterward. Her former partner, Omiya, now runs a roadside kitchen and believes Cadd's duty has swallowed her life. Meanwhile, the company is short on pay and a local magistrate is pressing Cadd to escort a prisoner whose guilt she doubts.