Maris

Maris is a young assistant — no more than fifteen years old — who works at the crone's clinic in Borosevo on Emesh. She is willowy, fair, and very thin, with flaxen hair and freckles; her slender build and freckled complexion mark her as plebeian, possibly even a serf. She is obedient and timid around the crone but clearly curious about Hadrian: she whispers to the crone asking whether he is 'very tall' and wonders aloud whether he might be a prince. When Hadrian steals clothes from the storeroom and attempts to slip away at night, Maris is the one who catches him leaving. She stares at him with an expression of anguish, her hands twitching, before he runs — and she screams, the sound of it lost in a gust of night air.