Thirteen moves, and not one of them a change of heart.

PERMANENT DISPLAY

The clan that never puts its iron away.

Yellowlegs wear their iron teeth and nails on permanent display. It's clan rule, not preference — but Iskra wears it like a personality. Everyone else's iron comes out when there's a reason for it. Hers is out in the mess hall. That's the whole read before she opens her mouth, and it isn't menace. A witch who is never not showing her teeth is a witch who has never once trusted a room to take her seriously without them. Manon walks into the Omega and doesn't have to do a single thing. Iskra cuts the food line and taunts the Thirteen, because the alternative is standing in a queue like everybody else.

THE OMEGA

Two attempts on Manon's life, both dressed up as nothing.

She shoved Manon off the platform into the pit where Titus was already savaging Abraxos, and then went about her day. When Abraxos balked at the Crossing she whipped him for it, which got her the brawl she'd been angling for since the food line. Both of those are attempted murder with a shrug attached, and the series never treats either as a turning point — because Iskra doesn't escalate. She just keeps going at exactly the same level. She is as bad on page four hundred as she was on page eighty. The consistency is genuinely the most interesting thing about her, and we're aware of how that sounds.

THE WAR GAMES

She called it an accident.

Fendir got his jaws into Keelie mid-air, held on until it was finished, and let her drop on Iskra's word. And Keelie — mortally wounded, falling — fought to level out anyway, because Petrah was unconscious on her back and Keelie was not going to let her hit the ground. That's the scene. Not the kill. The levelling out. Manon dove on Abraxos and got Petrah off Keelie's back, and Iskra told them it was an accident and nobody made her say otherwise. We have never once been fine about Keelie. And Iskra walked away from it having handed Manon the Wing Leader title by doing it — which is as close to justice as the War Games got.

MORATH

They gave her a night with Asterin, and she took all of it.

She watched Manon kill Zelta to protect Dorian and turned it into a trial — five of her own Yellowlegs on the charge sheet, three Matrons, the full ceremony of it at Morath. Petrah Blueblood stood up and spoke in Manon's defence, which is its own thing to sit with given whose wyvern Iskra had killed. Manon was cleared of treason and the blood debt stood anyway, so the Blackbeak Matron sentenced Asterin to die and handed Iskra the night before the execution. She whipped and beat Asterin until morning. And then the execution went wrong in the only way that mattered — the Matron finally told Manon what she was and what she'd done to her parents, Manon put a blade in her grandmother, and Asterin went out over the walls on Abraxos. Iskra spent a whole night on Asterin, and all she actually managed was to set Manon loose.

THE BATTLE OF ORYNTH

Two other witches settle up, and she's just in the way.

At Orynth she flew for Erawan and went straight at Manon, the way she always did, and Fendir got his jaws around Abraxos's neck and started dragging them both down. And then Petrah Blueblood came in. Petrah forced Fendir off, wrapped them the whole way down, and banked out at the last possible second. Iskra and Fendir did not. And here's the part that makes it land — Petrah wasn't settling anything with Iskra. She was paying Manon back for the War Games, for being the one witch who bothered to come and get her off a dying wyvern's back. Iskra spent four books making herself Manon's problem and then died as a debt between two other people. She was never even the subject of it. Nobody in that sky was thinking about Keelie. We were. We have never once stopped.