Salla has weather-burnished umber skin, roughened across the knuckles and forearms by years of hauling copper vats through salt wind. Her broad jaw shifts visibly when she chews, and her small, square teeth show whenever she laughs, which is often and usually at the wrong moment. She moves with a careful, springy gait, as if balancing a tray of full bottles even when empty-handed. Unexpectedly for a hard-traveling alchemist, she keeps a collection of tiny, meticulously folded paper birds pinned inside her coat.

Salla is exuberant about experiments but scrupulous about safety protocols she has personally written; she teases people to put them at ease, yet can become stern when anyone dismisses a real hazard. In company she performs confidence, but alone she rereads old letters and measures every reagent twice.

Salla grew up among the salt marshes and dye sheds of Reedcut, where her mother, Jessa, taught her to distill useful things from spoiled mash and discarded herbs. At nineteen, Salla’s first improvised gas-lamp burst during a flood evacuation, filling a crowded stairwell with choking vapor. She hauled two trapped neighbors out herself, but one, a young apprentice named Iven, suffered lasting lung damage. The event made her meticulous about measuring doses and careless about admitting when a joke or experiment has gone too far. Now she works as a traveling alchemist and practical joker, selling fumigation services, stink-bombs for pest control, and protective masks. She is trying to perfect a harmless, city-scale odor demonstration to force the council of Reedcut to fund better sewer ventilation. Her old friend Odel, a civic engineer, wants her help but fears another accident; Jessa wants her home; and Iven, now a mapmaker, has not forgiven her. Salla sends him money anonymously, though he has begun to suspect the truth.