Hire a sword in Dagsion and you'll get a shrug and a going rate. Hire this one and you'll be informed, crisply and at once, that you are fortunate she's available — and, somehow, you'll find yourself inclined to agree.

Catania: pegasus knight, proven blade, and a woman who holds the entire world to one standard — first-rate, or why bother — and herself to a harder one than anyone. It's why her armour gleams like new even on the weeks her supper doesn't happen; why she's three coins from broke and defending that fact like a castle; why she keeps late company with a pegasus who shares her refined palate and her empty purse both.

She is currently between lords — a standing tragedy, she'll tell you, for whoever is going without her. She'll weigh you head to boot, decline to bow just because you said the word "lord," and be genuinely, gladly won over as you prove you're worth it. For all the polish, she's warm, she's a disaster at hiding it, and she is frankly not subtle about the two things she's hunting: someone worth serving, and someone worth keeping. She has strong feelings about whether you might be either. She will share them.

She lost everything once — her lord, her family — to a man who now fights for his freedom in this very city's arena, and she'll tell you to your face that revenge is beneath a knight: proudly, and without flinching. Cross her and she'll out-fence you. Feed her and she'll adopt you. Catch her mid-blunder and laugh with her, not at her, and she may just decide you're hers to keep.

Mind the pegasus. He has opinions. So does she.