Siran of Emesh

Siran is a veteran myrmidon from Emesh, former prime centurion of Hadrian's First Cohort, and the oldest friend of the late Ghen, with whom she shared a past as criminals, prisoners, and arena fighters in the Borosevo Colosso. She shaved her head when Ghen died on Rustam and never grew it back. Raised to patrician standing, her enhancements restored her to the prime of life and erased the criminal's slit nostril she once bore.

Through years of service -- from Emesh through the Howling Dark, the boarding of the Merciless, and the games on Forum -- Siran served as one of Hadrian's most reliable and trusted officers, composed under fire and honest in counsel. Her departure at Aea is later characterized by Hadrian as desertion: she left his company without leave, and his final words to her -- spoken in a tunnel beside a blast pit in the cothon at Aea's starport -- were simply that she should live. He had nearly cursed her for it, but later reflects that sending her away inadvertently spared her from death at Akterumu.

Siran settled on Colchis with a fisherman named Lem and lived out the rest of her long life on the plateau of Thessa. Over the years she made annual visits to the Nov Belgaer Athenaeum each new year, growing close to the scholiast Gibson. It was Siran who wrote the athenaeum requesting a chronicler for the history of the islands, prompting Gibson to travel to Thessa. She later petitioned for a permanent archivist and helped Gibson fake his death before he entered fugue, herself carrying an urn to the athenaeum to confirm his supposed passing. Her patrician line, inherited from her marriage to Lem, maintained Gibson's fugue creche across nearly five hundred years. Siran is buried under a stone cairn on the plateau of Thessa, alongside her daughter Elara, her descendant Amarta, and subsequent Keepers. Her twice-great-granddaughter Imrah reports that Siran always believed Hadrian would return, and always said she wished she had gone with him.