Ysel

• Build & height: 1.60 m, slight, narrow-shouldered, about twenty (never stated). She sits perfectly still, so still nobody can tell if she's asleep (ch. 4).
• Face: small, pale, solemn. Half-taken (to ch. 207): the left side whole and pale with a dark grey eye; the right side "drained to grey, soft-edged, rubbing out", "like a photograph left too long in the sun", its eye one that doesn't catch the light (ch. 8, 200). Fraying (ch. 205–207): dotted lines where a shoulder, a cheek, an ear should be. Whole (ch. 207 on): "a young woman, pale, solemn, two dark grey eyes, short dark hair. Both halves the same." Her first smile is "the faintest crooked edge of a smile that nobody on the Kettle ever saw" (ch. 207).
• Hair: short and dark; while half-taken, half of it grey (ch. 200). Marka used to braid it (ch. 204), so on the Kettle it was longer.
• Eyes: dark grey. One that didn't catch firelight (Saga I); two that do (Saga IV on).
• Skin & mark: pale. No sin-mark (K-I UNMARKED). Her grey half was cold to the touch and untouched by fire, not even warm (ch. 8).
• Clothing, layer by layer: Saga I: a dark wool tunic · a hooded cloak, hood always up · a satchel strap round her neck under the hood (ch. 200). Saga IV, whole: a borrowed coat (ch. 208) over the same tunic, the hood finally down.
• Signature item: the Kettle's red pennant, "a small, faded, ragged triangle of red canvas, with a crude kettle stitched on it in black thread" (ch. 204). She took it down before she burned the boat and kept it; she raised it as her flag walking up to Aldhrun's wall; since ch. 208 it flies under the Marka's own flag. And, from ch. 207: no shadow at all.
• Movement: she walks, never runs, and is never hit (ch. 3: "moves through the falling glass at a walk, never hurrying"). Her shadow follows her one full second late (ch. 7, 27), and in ch. 200 it stands up and walks behind her. Whole, she is quick with rope and quiet on deck. "She never looks behind her. She only ever looks out." (ch. 213, about herself). 207, light every scene she's in so the absence of her shadow is visible. Never cheat it.
• Voice: quiet, flat, sparing, full of "…". Deadpan ("…Did you."). She hums a half-tune, five notes up and three down, never finished (ch. 204), and in ch. 207 finishes it: "four more notes, coming down home." Balloons: small and plain. While half-taken, the right half of each balloon fades like her face. The tune is drawn as notes: eight until ch. 207, then eight and four more.
• Variant looks: The tavern (ch. 2: hooded, still, the brawl breaking round her) · Hood down (ch. 8, the half face) · The herald (ch. 200–204: at the head of the Unwritten, then alone with the pennant raised) · Fraying (ch. 205–207) · Whole (ch. 207) · At the wheel (ch. 208 on) · Holding the door (ch. 225–229: both hands on a plain wooden door, feet braced on the threshold, sweat on her face).

Half-taken (Saga I; ch. 200–206): THE LATE SHADOW (gone for good since ch. 205)

• Her shadow acts on its own, a second behind her, "a long black human shape with no face, no edges and no thickness, like a hole cut in the world" (ch. 8). Greed-sight slides off it; a lantern and Ivar's bullet pass straight through ("It's not THERE, boy!"). Where it touches, colour and memory drain: it greyed Vigolas's sleeve and drained a memory out of his eyes (his mother's hands braiding a rope, ch. 8); it tore the Kettle's hold apart; it greyed the Bastion's jetty until the planks "un-be" and the crew fell into the Tideline (ch. 201).
• Blades pass through her "like through smoke" (ch. 8, Rougeina's).
• She can step backward into her own shadow and be gone, "swallowed like a stone into dark water" (ch. 8).
• No threads to anyone, ever (Kompis, ch. 2, 8, 200), until one, to Drekk (ch. 205).
• The anchor rule: "Shadow's the anchor. Shadow goes, the half goes." (Drämmen, ch. 205). When her shadow fled with the page, she frayed.

Whole (ch. 207 on): THE WAY IN

• She always knows the way in. "She could find the way into anywhere, like she'd been there before." (Drekk, ch. 204). The Archive by sleep ("It's not wrong.", ch. 3; "Ysel knew the trick.", ch. 49). The hidden passage under the Bastion to the back of Solvig's Vault (ch. 213), and its handleless door: "Here." A side door nobody else saw into the Twelfth's office (ch. 220: "This way. Always this way."). The Margin's door, opened from outside (ch. 225): "I know the way in. I always know the way in. You showed me."
• She never knows the way out. "I can hold the way in. I can't make a way out. Nobody can." (ch. 226). A door she opens has to be held, and someone else has to bring the people inside back through it (Mingus led Vigolas out of the Margin, ch. 229).
• Knots: "Best knots on any boat." She trips Cleaners with rope tied to bollards (ch. 209), hog-ties a grey hound in three seconds (ch. 213), and hauls Drekk out of a floor Solvig un-made (ch. 214).
• A way into a person (ch. 274): she looks at Gnag, the Root-Eater, "with her strange eyes: the eyes that see the one way into anything": "…There's one way into him. His mouth. It always was." Flisa: "I know." The crews win by feeding him.
• What it can't do: make a way out; read Hallbard's Beam ("I can't. It's too bright.", ch. 231; "I know the way in to anything. Not this. You steer.", ch. 232); find the way into the Mouth ("Not that.", ch. 230). The Null: "I know what it is. I've been in it." (ch. 205): she can't walk back into it and come out. Mingus growled at her shadow in ch. 8 (his first growl in the story); since ch. 208 he follows her everywhere, sniffing the deck where her shadow should be.

• Tempo: 2: a new entry, an unmarked heart that has only just started being counted.
• Home tempo: a threshold: any doorway she is standing in, with one foot over the line.
• Heartbeat technique: THE WAY IN. Inside one heartbeat she sees the one way into whatever is in front of her (a room, a mountain, a page, a place nobody can reach), and it is real the moment she sees it. No one else finds a door in a single beat. (Bali steps through reflections; Wendlan built gates; Ysel just knows where the door already is.)
• Burn cost: no way back. She never knows the way out, so every way in she opens she has to hold while others come back through, and holding is all her small heart: in ch. 226–229 she held the Margin's door for three chapters and collapsed against Drekk when she let go. Holding it longer than a tempo-2 heart can count would overflow her. She knows it. She held it anyway.

Half of herself, for years: "It hurts. The half that's gone. Like a tooth. All the time. Every day since the beach. You never knew." (ch. 205). The Kettle, which she burned to stop the crew leaving with the shards. Her shadow, gone with the page for good: she casts no shadow, ever (Drämmen's "wrong", ch. 207). And the way out, which she has never known.

• Half-taken: without her shadow she frays (ch. 205–206). The Gluttony Codex lunges for the page she carries (ch. 200, 205).
• Drekk. She couldn't hurt him and couldn't face him ("…Don't, Drekk. I'm not here for you.", ch. 201).
• Whole: a K-I body; no way out; can't read the Beam.
• Saga I outcome: she didn't get the black shard (ch. 8). Vigolas escaped with all thirty-seven; she burned the Kettle and vanished.
• Saga IV outcome: not beaten: saved. Drämmen dragged her back a second time and Öde remembered her whole (ch. 207), and she said no to the man who made her the promise (ch. 215).

• The Kettle's red pennant.
• The satchel she carried under her hood; in it, the 78th page (ch. 205, lost).
• Rope. A lantern to lead the way in (ch. 213).
• A hammock in the bilge on the Marka ("It's quieter.", ch. 208), as she slept in the Kettle's bilge.
• Companions: Drekk at the wheel; Mingus at her heels, puzzled.

Saga I: she doesn't move; her shadow does. She sits still while a brawl breaks round her (ch. 2) and lets the shadow tear the hold apart (ch. 8). Saga IV: she leads. She opens a fight by taking the crew in the back way ("You came in the back way. Nobody's ever come in the back way.", Solvig, ch. 213), works the edges with rope and knots, pulls friends out of holes, and ends it by talking the enemy home or holding the door. Team combos: Ysel + Drekk (wheel and rope: she ropes him out, he steers by what she finds) · Ysel + Öde (remembering and the way in: together they ask the Unwritten what they loved, ch. 219) · Ysel + Oswin (the way in nobody sees, taken by people nobody can see, ch. 213) · Ysel + Vigolas (the Margin: she opens it, he says himself out) · Ysel + Mingus (she holds the door; he walks in and leads the captain home, ch. 229).

• Wants: to be whole without an ending. To be asked to stay, and then (harder) to ask.
• Fears: being half; lies told kindly ("He said it wouldn't hurt…", ch. 206).
• Contradiction: she knows the way into anything and never the way out; the girl who burned the crew's first boat is now its second hand at the wheel.
• Humour: bone-dry. "…Did you." (to Bakasura's "…Ate a whale.", ch. 208) · "Second hand at the wheel and a thief." (Vigolas, ch. 213) is a joke she lets stand.
• Habits: hates fish and eats it anyway, with a tiny deadpan grimace (ch. 204); sleeps in the bilge; hums the tune (finished now); ties knots when she's thinking.
• Alone: in the bilge, humming eight notes and four more.

• Drekk: found her, fed her, taught her knots, lost his boat to her. "You burned my boat! You sat on my boat and ate my soup and then you burned it! Where have you been?" (ch. 201). Her one thread runs to him (ch. 205: "…Who do you think."). Whole: "…Drekk. You got old." (ch. 207). He taught her to ask: "You open your mouth. You say the thing. Worst that happens, somebody says no." (ch. 208). His second hand at the wheel. "Ysel. Third thing. Remember?" (ch. 215).
• Marka: named her and braided her hair. Her joy in Iskall's Look is exactly that: big hands braiding her hair on a dark deck. Marka's. (ch. 256)
• Öde: learned her from Drekk in one night, wrote it on sail-canvas over her heart, and remembered her whole: "…I remember you. All of you. You're whole. Come home." (ch. 207; Öde's price: who taught her to mow). "Then don't make a way out. Make a way in. Into here. Into us." (ch. 229).
• Drämmen: dragged her back twice, wrong both times. "He dragged me out twice. I never said thank you." (ch. 208).
• Jorvand (Redactor): "Hello, little shadow." (ch. 215, Marka's name in his mouth). "…You said it wouldn't hurt." / "It wouldn't have. Not at the end." / "…She made me whole. With remembering. It hurt the whole time. And I'm here. So, no. No thank you." / "…Good for you." (ch. 215). Face to face: "…Hello, little shadow. You look whole. It suits you." / "…And you came back grey." (ch. 222). She knew his voice in the shard ("Younger. Kinder. But his.", ch. 219) and his office ("He said it was the only place he was ever happy.", ch. 220). She never calls him "Redactor".
• Vigolas: the man she stole from and then opened a door for. "…You let me come." (ch. 224). "Best hire I ever made." (his, ch. 213).
• Trollmage: his book wanted her page from the first day.
• Kompis: "Nothing. No threads at all, to anyone." (ch. 2) → "…She's got a thread." (ch. 205) → "…She's in. She's in the world." (ch. 207).
• Mingus: growled at her shadow (ch. 8); lay with his chin on her ankle after (ch. 207); follows her, sniffing for the shadow that isn't there.
• Rougeina: her blade passed through her (ch. 8: "You can't kill what's already half forgotten, little ghost."); Ysel read her name aloud in the Roll-Call (ch. 214).
• Solvig: "…She said no to him. I never knew you could." (ch. 215).
• Flisa: a carved face out of the Marka's wheel, between the spokes, nose to nose with her: "Boo." (ch. 264). Ysel later showed Flisa the one way into the Root-Eater (ch. 274).
• Kali talks at her nonstop (ch. 208); Bakasura "…Ate a whale." / "…Did you." (ch. 208); Levla: her line sets up his entrance in the Margin ("Half of who he is isn't in his head any more. It's on a market stall.", ch. 226).

• "It's not wrong." (ch. 3, her first line)
• "He only wanted one." / "Now he'll want everything." (ch. 8)
• "…I didn't know how to ask for anything." (ch. 205)
• "…Drekk. You got old." (ch. 207)
• "…Can I come?" (ch. 208)
• "…I always know the way in. I just never knew the way out." (ch. 213)
• "…So, no. No thank you." (ch. 215)
• "…There's one way into him. His mouth. It always was." (ch. 274)