Argentumala has weather-polished brown skin, fine creases at the corners of her eyes, and a calm face that seems to give every speaker time to finish. Her silver-threaded hair is braided close to the scalp and pinned beneath a plain hood. She moves with careful economy, placing each foot as if testing ice. A faint scent of beeswax, cold rain, and the medicinal juniper oil she rubs into her hands follows her; she knows about the oil, but not how strongly it clings to her wool.

Cautious and compassionate, she gives people time to make their own choices, yet quietly arranges the room so that some choices become easier than others. With frightened witnesses she is warm and practical; among powerful people she grows still and exacting. She dislikes commands but can be stubbornly certain that her own plans are harmless.

Before she became the Silver Witness, Argentumala kept testimony for the ferry courts at a river crossing. During a flood, a magistrate ordered her to seal the doors of a crowded storehouse to protect a cache of grain. She disobeyed, opened a side passage, and saved most of the trapped families, but the delay cost the town its grain stores and left her younger brother among the dead. The choice taught her that laws can be cruel and that good intentions can still leave bodies behind. Years later, the secret society called the Order of the Silver Dragon recruited her for her memory, patience, and refusal to confuse authority with truth. Now she quietly gathers evidence that the Order's respected patron, Master Vasko, has been selling advance warning of its investigations. Argentumala has not accused him: she is building a circumstance in which he must reveal himself before witnesses. She stays in touch with her niece, Enni, a ferry pilot who thinks Argentumala's caution has become a way to avoid choosing sides.