Mara is a compact, weather-hardened woman with a broad, capable face and a slight forward lean from years spent reading ledgers by bad light. Her hands are square-fingered, scarred across the knuckles, and permanently darkened beneath the nails by ink and coal dust. She walks quickly but never wastes a step, turning corners as if she expects trouble to be waiting there. Her hair is braided close to the scalp on one side and left in a rough silver-black fall on the other, a style she adopted after losing part of her left ear in the first bell collapse. She looks like someone built to lift a gate beam, yet she wears a delicate blue glass bead at her throat and handles it with almost reverent care. Her presence leaves people with the uneasy impression that they have already confessed something.