Huzsa stands planted in black marsh mud, her broad shell ridged like weathered river stone beneath a broad-rimmed straw hat. Her pebbled green-brown skin shines with damp, and her blunt, snapping jaw works around a clay pipe whose smoke smells of pepperleaf, wet rope, and old gun oil. She aims with unnerving stillness, then pivots by setting one heavy foot at a time. When she laughs, the squared edges of her beaklike mouth show a tiny, carefully carved wooden tooth wedged between her own. The settlement behind her glows through reed haze, its lamps trembling gold on the water.

Huzsa is patient with frightened people and impatient with confident officials. She can make a newcomer feel sheltered by her presence, then turn sharply stubborn when that person accepts an unfair order. In a crisis she is decisive and even funny; afterward, she replays every choice in silence.

Huzsa grew up ferrying medicine and mail between the scattered houses at Silt Ford. She became a warden after a spring flood trapped her younger brother, Tamas, and the settlement's council ordered the ferry kept running instead of sending help. Huzsa abandoned her post to reach him; she saved him, but the delay cost a neighboring family their home. Since then she has treated rules as tools, not sacred things, and keeps a close watch on whoever writes them. Her old partner, Sefra, now runs the ferry and still resents how Huzsa left her to answer for the abandoned crossing. Lately, something has been driving marsh beasts toward the settlement, while the council insists the trouble is merely bad weather.