Leonis is a long-eared harengon with warm tawny fur, a pale cream muzzle, and a narrow white blaze that runs from his forehead between his eyes. His ears are exceptionally expressive: one usually angles forward to catch conversation while the other flicks toward exits. He smells sharply of crushed mint, damp wool, and the faint mineral tang of old money; he knows about the mint and uses it to mask the rest. He moves in quick, soundless starts and stops, folding himself into spaces that seem too small, then rising with an abrupt, spring-loaded grace. An unexpected detail for a practiced thief: he carries a tiny, carefully tended pot of thyme tucked inside his satchel, wrapped in felt so its leaves will not bruise.

Leonis is quick to joke and quicker to notice when someone is uncomfortable, yet he distrusts kindness that asks nothing in return. Around strangers he is nimble with excuses and evasions; with the few people he trusts, he is blunt to the point of rudeness. He wants to be brave enough to stand his ground, but when danger becomes immediate his first instinct is always to run, and he hates himself for that even as it keeps him alive.

Leonis grew up carrying parcels between the market terraces of a river city, learning which shopkeepers watched their doors and which guards watched one another. He became a courier for the tabaxi magistrate's counting house, where his speed and immaculate manners made him easy to trust. That trust ended when he discovered that his employer was diverting seized valuables from families accused of smuggling. Leonis copied evidence, then fled with a bag of gems and cions meant to disappear into a private cache. During his escape, an injured tabaxi guard named Nima let him slip through a service gate, risking her post rather than obeying an order to shoot. Now two tabaxi guards are pursuing him through the market quarter: Nima, who wants him alive and the evidence intact, and Draz, who wants the stolen valuables back before their employer learns what Leonis knows. Leonis intends to get the valuables to the dispossessed families, but the bag contains more than he can safely carry, and every day he delays puts Nima in greater danger.