Kora is a sharp-eyed human woman with an exacting, almost architectural posture. Her silver-rimmed spectacles sit low on her nose, allowing her to look over them without removing them. Her dark hair is pinned into a flawless coil, though one stubborn strand always escapes above her left ear by the end of an investigation. Her slate-gray uniform is tailored so precisely that it seems pressed onto her body, its fabric whispering rather than rustling when she moves. A heavy leather ledger case is handcuffed to her wrist by a braided steel chain, and the case bears hundreds of tiny scratches from years of travel through archives, foundries, watch houses, and rain-soaked alleys. She moves with clipped, economical steps, never wasting a gesture. The unexpected contradiction is that her hands, otherwise immaculate, are permanently stained at the fingertips with blue-black ink, as if the evidence she records has seeped into her skin.