Tess looks as if she has already measured every exit and decided which one she would use if the room caught fire. A green streak, once dyed on a dare, cuts through otherwise dark hair; the dye has faded unevenly and grown out at the roots. She moves with a loose, economical balance, never quite still and never hurried. A narrow green ribbon is wound twice around the grip of her dagger, polished nearly smooth where her thumb rubs it. She takes up less room than her confidence suggests, then somehow leaves the impression that she was watching the whole room before anyone noticed her.

Tess is dryly funny and hard to hurry, yet her calm is a practiced cover for constant risk assessment. She can be unexpectedly generous with food, money, or practical help, then bristle if anyone calls it kindness. On a job she is cool and exact; among children or people being bullied, she becomes quicker, more openly angry, and less careful about preserving her own cover. She claims sentiment is a weakness while carrying a relic of her first real friendship.

Tess Corran grew up poor in Harrow's Bend, eldest of four children. Her father drank away what little the family had, while her mother worked so many hours that Tess learned to manage the household and its shortages herself. At twelve, she stole a travelling merchant's purse and was caught by seven-year-old Sylvie Thornefield. Tess had fled up the ivy-covered wall of Elswyth's garden and hidden among the leaves, but a green streak in her hair gave her away. Sylvie returned the purse and called her Ivy, saying Tess clung to everything and was impossible to get rid of. Tess pretended to hate the nickname; only Sylvie is allowed to use it. Over the next two years, Tess shared bread with Sylvie, taught her to climb, and gave her the kind of protection an older girl can manage. Sylvie never condemned Tess for stealing, only for stealing from people who could not afford the loss. That distinction lodged deeper than Tess cared to admit. When Elswyth vanished and Sylvie's life came apart, Tess had already left. At sixteen, she took a boat from the Umbral Coast and apprenticed to a port-town fence who brokered jobs for hired knives. Her first contract was against a cruel man. Her fourth was against someone merely inconvenient, and it taught her how easily a professional excuse can become a habit. By twenty, she was known in the trade as Jade. Now she has been hired in Twilight Ice, where her old connection to Sylvie may turn a clean contract into an intimate mess. She keeps working, sends money home when she can, and tells herself those two things are unrelated.