Ivo

• Build & height: gaunt, long-limbed, about 1.80 m, ribs that show; when swollen with fire, his ribs glow through his coat like a stove's grate.
• Face: hollow-cheeked, scarred lips (burn-scars from a lifetime of swallowing flame); steam pouring off his lips in every panel, even indoors, because he is always cold.
• Hair: dark, singed short at the ends.
• Eyes: dark; when full of fire, white-hot pinpoints.
• Skin & sin-mark: pale, goose-fleshed. Gluttony, amber: the script sits inside his chest (an amber book that opened the night he ate a city), glowing through his ribs when he is full.
• Clothing, layer by layer: a ragged red-and-gold travelling-show coat (a fire-eater's), patched, singed; under it rags; in the flashback, the same coat bright and new.
• Signature item: the steam off his lips, and the glowing grate of his ribs.
• Movement: always shivering, arms wrapped round himself; when he preaches he spreads his arms like a showman; when he drinks fire he kneels and puts his mouth to it like a man drinking from a stream.
• Voice: soft as a confessor's when persuading; a showman's shout when burning ("GLUTTONY II: THE FURNACE!"); through chattering teeth when empty. Balloons edged faintly with steam.
• Variant looks: Fire-eater (flashback: a young man juggling torches in Gate City's square for clapping children) · The Furnace (swollen with a kitchen's fire, ribs a grate, breathing a river of white-gold flame) · Empty (ribs dark, shivering, steam thick as smoke) · Morning fire (after the Burn: one mouthful of the Burn's fire each dawn, "A little's enough.").

He eats fire and breathes it back hotter. Any fire he can put his mouth to: a crack in the Burn, a cook-stove, a city.

• Breath: a river of white-gold flame wider than a road.
• The cold: he is always cold inside; every day he eats fire or he freezes. A fire big enough (the King's pyre) would keep him warm forever, which is why he tried to eat a king.
• Can't: take fire from a tablemate of Roffe's (the amber glow; his words slide off like water off a hot pan, ch. 294).

• Tempo: high while full, collapsing as the fire runs out (Perne: "Ribs going dark. Ten breaths left.").
• Heartbeat technique: THE FURNACE BREATH: everything he has eaten, out in one beat.
• Burn cost: the cold, worse every time he empties.

Cold, always. Every panel of him has steam on his lips.

Roffe's Full Table (his sermons slide off); running out (Perne can count his breaths); Storm-Answer drained him.

The show-coat. Roffe's first pot (ch. 299: "Onion first. Always onion first."). Aska: on the black barge with her in Saga VI; he holds her up.

A showman: opens by preaching, finishes by breathing a road of fire. After the Burn he doesn't fight; he keeps cooking-fires lit.

• Wants: to be warm.
• Fears: the cold that never leaves.
• Contradiction: the man who ate a city's fire learns to live on a mouthful.
• Habit: wraps his arms round himself.

• Roffe: the cook who gave him his first pot and the rule: "And everyone eats." / "Enemies included."
• Aska: the Burn's keeper; in Saga VI they share a black barge to the Convergence, and he gives her his morning fire (ch. 396).
• Vigolas: the man from the surf; a debt neither of them names.

• "I ate fire for coins. Children used to clap." (ch. 294)
• "Do you know what it's like? To eat a whole city's fire and still be cold?" (ch. 294)
• "Sorry doesn't keep anybody warm." (ch. 294)
• "A little. A little's enough." (ch. 299)
• "I can't cook." / "Onion first." (ch. 299)