Sava has a sun-browned face, a broad jaw, and small, close-set teeth that show when she laughs: her upper incisors overlap like badly stowed cutlery. She chews slowly and deliberately, never taking her eyes off a room for long. Her salt-stiff hair is tied back with a strip of sailcloth, and she moves with a sailor's rolling balance even on a dry floor. Her work clothes are patched at the elbows and stained with spice and lamp oil, but her battered red waistcoat is scrubbed and mended with almost ceremonial care. It is an unexpected finery for a tavernkeeper who claims not to care about appearances.

Sava is generous with food and shelter but exacting about honesty. In a calm room she is dryly funny and patient; when a storm, debt, or threat looms, she becomes brisk and controlling. She wants people to rely on one another, yet hates feeling dependent herself.

Sava spent twenty years as a deckhand and cook aboard the merchant brig Quick Mercy, learning to read weather, hunger, and mutiny before they announced themselves. During a storm off the Gull Coast, her captain ordered the crew to cut loose a boat full of shipwreck survivors to keep the brig afloat. Sava disobeyed, helped haul the survivors aboard, and was put ashore with no wages when the ship reached port. One rescued child, now a grown harbor pilot named Jori, still visits Every Fancy and insists Sava saved more than a life that night. Sava bought the tavern with borrowed money and hard-won favors. Now she gives sailors a place to sleep when they have nowhere else, while the lender who financed the purchase demands repayment and a dockside gang pressures her to let them use the cellar. She wants to keep the tavern independent without turning it into a refuge that gets everyone killed.