Taziki is a narrow-shouldered human woman with the compact, tense posture of someone who expects ceilings to fall and doors to open violently. Her skin is deep umber, dusted permanently at the knuckles and along the bridge of her nose with pale masonry powder. Her left ear is slightly folded from an old beating, while a thin white scar crosses her lower lip. She moves in abrupt, economical starts, freezing whenever boots scrape stone, then slipping forward with startling grace. Her hands are callused and nimble, but she wears one immaculate copper ring on her smallest finger, an unexpectedly delicate possession amid her ragged survival gear. At first glance she seems brittle and exhausted. When cornered, she becomes unnervingly still, like a nail driven into wood.