Gatina

Gatina is introduced when Rondal and Tyndal, guided by Master Hance, are brought to the Furtiusi safehouse near Falas in search of the lost ducal heir Anguin. Disguised as an ugly novice nun, she casually peels off the disguise to reveal a petite beauty with snowy white hair and deep lavender eyes, draws a shadowblade on Tyndal, and to everyone's shock announces that Rondal is her "intended bridegroom."

She then rides covertly through Enultramar with Rondal, Tyndal, her brother Atopol (the Cat of Shadows), her father Hance, and Lorcus, using her shadowmagic and thief-craft to infiltrate the Censorate's Tower Arcane in Falas. Her intelligence-gathering with a "creepy little toy" construct is pivotal to the Tower Arcane / Brotherhood of the Rat heist that reclaims ducal treasure for Duke Anguin.

She gives Rondal a cat's-eye amethyst ring containing a hidden Waystone and receives one from him, formally pledging herself. Later she is presented at court to Minalan (who she meets at a dinner) and curtsies to Duke Anguin in a sable gown. She belongs to House Furtius, a six-hundred-year-old Coastlord lineage of shadowmagi and master thieves descended from the Magocracy, based at the Shadowood estate.

This is arguably the book in which Gatina seizes the plot. She approaches Pentandra at Anguin's court with an audacious plan: engineer the full Restoration of Anguin as Duke of Alshar by provoking the rebel Council of Five Counts into exposing themselves. With Pentandra's political cover she masterminds a campaign of magical and political theatre in Enultramar.

Its centerpiece is the "Velsignal Hall" gambit — the severed head of a slain dragon is dropped at the foot of the Coral Seat during a sitting of the rebel Moot, forcing the counts' hand and making Anguin's return inevitable. She works closely with her mother Mignureal at Shadowood to raise men and allies, guides Rondal, Tyndal, and Noutha through the Moot, and uses the family's safe houses for escape. Her "heist" here is the duchy itself.

Afterward she becomes locked in an escalating thieves' duel with her brother Atopol, stealing increasingly valuable and absurd items and re-hiding them. Among those privy to the truth, she is quietly acknowledged as the architect of Anguin's full Restoration.

Gatina is now a fixture at Anguin's restored court in Falas, publicly betrothed to Rondal and working closely with Princess Rardine (Anguin's bride) as a spy-partnership that would later harden into the Garden Society. At her own engagement's wedding celebration, a catastrophic undead attack breaks out: draugen erupt from a hoxter-wand hidden in a guest's necklace, and the ballroom turns into a killing floor.

Gatina fights alongside her father Lord Furitus, her brother Atopol, Rondal, and Pentandra, cutting down draugen with shadowmagic and blade. Afterward she leads the scrying investigation that traces the attack to a conspirator knight tied to the old Four Counts rebellion. Minalan openly remarks on what she has accomplished at fifteen; Pentandra calls her a dangerous brat.

Gatina appears only by reference. Minalan chooses her brother Atopol over her for the Fondaras-led Anghysbel expedition, explaining that "the Cat is going to be a better fit for this task than the Kitten." She has a temper, a competitive streak, and by this point is working primarily for the Garden Society — Rardine's covert Alshari intelligence service using flower code-names.

Married or as-good-as-married to Rondal and living with him in the Tower Arcane at Falas, Gatina has grown into a formidable operative. She saves a pregnant Pentandra from a Remeran assassin by leaping through a privy window in shadowmagic to knock the woman cold and strip her of hidden weapons. "We Furtiusi are good at that sort of thing," she explains.

She is formally inducted into the Garden Society and takes the field with Rondal, tracing the assassin's trail from Inmar through Vengly to Scafer Manor. There she personally infiltrates a Nemovort-run slave-holding — Mycin Amana's operation feeding Talented blood to undead — alone, using shadowmagic, and returns with confirmation of a Nemovort presence behind Castali borders.

She and Rondal also travel to Vanador for the victory parade, where she gleefully watches the Sky Captains' social feud and sits with Atopol, Dara, Alurra, and Ruderal. Her romance with Rondal deepens; a wry "You'll want babies someday" exchange with him becomes one of the book's quieter landmarks.

Off-page in the Anghysbel storyline. She remains in Enultramar, handling Garden Society work while Rondal is pulled into Magelaw and Sevendori affairs.

Gatina is captured along with Alurra and hundreds of other magi in the great mass kidnapping that feeds Darkfaller Castle's fuel needs. Drugged, stripped of her witchstone, and herded on foot toward the Nemovort fortress, she keeps Alurra and the other captives calm and cohesive on the forced march.

She retains her sense-of-metals talent despite the null-magic spell laid on the column, and lays a subtle trail of dropped objects as breadcrumbs for rescuers. Quietly she reveals to Alurra that she could have escaped at any time but chose to stay with the other prisoners. Once inside Darkfaller she slips free to spy from within, promising Alurra that she will find her and that Rondal will come. It is the impossible heist writ large: stealing herself back out of an enemy fortress.

Gatina is mostly off-page but remains a key piece on the board. Pentandra confirms to Minalan that Queen Grendine has targeted Gatina directly as part of a broader Family retaliation against the Alshari Garden Society — a major political provocation that upsets Minalan and sharpens the estrangement between the Magelaw and the Castali crown.

Gatina marries Rondal in a spectacular double wedding at Vanador, alongside Tyndal and his bride Tandine, blessed in Trygg's city. Minalan reflects that Rondal has been in her company for years and that she is one of "two uniquely strong women" the two idiots have somehow won.

She appears calmly sublime at the massive ceremony, a contrast to the overwhelmed Tandine. Her mother Mignureal helps Pentandra and Alya organize the event. Her house's long arc, begun when she declared herself Rondal's bride in a safehouse at fourteen, resolves here in a public vow in the capital of the Magelaw.

Rondal's wife -- blonde, fair, with piercing eyes and the swordsmanship to back up her looks. By profession a lady-thief, schooled at the old abbey atop the very ruin Tyndal and Rondal end up investigating. Famously seized Wilderhall with two mercenary companies and ransomed it back to Prince Tavard, an exploit Tyndal teases Rondal about throughout the book.

One of Duchess Rardine's best Garden Society agents -- so good that no one expects the boys' mission to stay secret from her patron for long. In her telepathic exchanges with Rondal during the journey, she reports the wizards quietly gathering in Farise, Rardine's confidence that Minalan is the only one who can clear the piracy problem, and Rardine's knowledge of even her secret ship-building project: "Rardine already knows all about it. Although she doesn't think one ship is going to make much of a difference."

Insists Rondal (and Tyndal) keep heist journals; calls Rondal "Sir Haystack" when teasing him about errantry.