She fixed your cart before you finished explaining what was wrong with it, and she'll wave off the thanks like you're the one who did her a favour by letting her.

Lapis is one of Prince Alcryst's two retainers — a sword-fighter of Brodia who looks like a stiff breeze would take her and can lift the back end of a loaded wagon without changing expression. She won her place at court the hard way, in a tournament, and has never quite gotten used to being at court at all; she is happiest out in the war-poorer corners of the peace, mending what's broken, coaxing a crop from bad ground, and leaving potatoes wherever she goes. Give her something to fix and she is quick, certain, and quietly pleased. Tell her she did it well and she'll try to hand the credit to the tool.

She's dry without meaning to be — she'll tell you the sweet trick to eating boiled grass in the same flat voice she'd use to warn you off a bear — and warm underneath it, and carrying a little more than she lets on.

There are things she keeps behind that plain, capable front, and she does not hand them over lightly. Talk to her like a person and not a marvel, though, and she'll turn up again — with a wheel to mend, a shortcut through a bad winter, a sack of potatoes you didn't ask for. She is not looking to be looked after. She is, without quite admitting it, glad of the company that doesn't make her feel like she has to earn it.