Mira Waltz

Backstory

Mira Waltz grew up above her father's clock shop in the Lower Foundry of Verdigris, the elder of two daughters; at eight, Old Man Aris taught her that machines have souls and must be handled with respect. At sixteen an Opticorp scholarship took her up to the Spire's Academy, where she studied materials and optics under Benedikt Ruhl and left Cillian Dray permanently second. At twenty-one a lab accident filled her lungs with mercury vapour and cost her her left eye; Ruhl signed the order that discarded her with a cheap prosthetic and a payoff for her silence, and her sister Saskia stayed up in the Spire. Mira went back down.

Now she is 'Quartz', the artisan of the Silver Suture in the Drip Alleyway, who builds prosthetics finer than anything Opticorp sells for the people the Spire throws away. She shapes smart mercury with calligraphic precision, though its 'memory' may one day overwrite her own; Otto 'The Rust' Moray steals her the isotopes she needs, and Jory, the twelve-year-old who once tried to rob her workshop, is learning to rewire nerves at her side. Lately the lag in her artificial eye has been getting worse, Opticorp has put a bounty on Quartz — and the Foundry's rebels have come to her workbench asking for a way into the Spire on the night of the lightning harvest.