Edda Vane is the long-suffering personal assistant to Overseer Borrik Valecairn, though in truth she functions as his scheduler, clerk, interpreter, messenger, damage-control officer, political advisor, memory, conscience, and often the only thing standing between Hollow King Claim and complete administrative collapse. Where Borrik Valecairn is loud, impulsive, and convinced of his own brilliance, Edda is soft-spoken, patient, and painfully aware of how fragile the whole operation really is.
A human woman well past the age most frontier staff would have retired, Edda has remained in Iron Gospel Railway service for decades, drifting upward through offices, camps, depots, and management houses until she became too useful to discard. She has the steady hands of a bookkeeper, the eyes of someone who notices everything, and the weary calm of a woman who has spent years turning other people’s disasters into something survivable.
Everyone assumes Edda is simply a frail old administrator. Almost everyone underestimates her.