Mara Venn

Mara's identity is entangled with altered death records, but she is not reducible to them.

In The Godless Priest

Mara Venn was a Crowbrook woman remembered by almost nobody, who gave Oren half a pear and gave fruit to every gutter child who asked. Beneath Saint Drev her name opened the doors Oren used. At Sela Morn's funeral her mother recognised her gold tooth in the broth, revealing that the corpse office had assigned Sela's body number to Mara. The pear entered in Oren's kindness ledger became evidence, and her family reclaimed her teeth after witnessed testing. In the Canal Thing her name released a lower jaw, while a stolen child's heart commanding the creature had been given her name. Darian Venn, killed in the Saintweed Market, belonged to her family. At Cassian's trial her mother spoke in her name, warning that the new office could turn every dead person into evidence until families needed permission to grieve, and asked whether ordinary citizens could accuse the march-priest while the army moved.

After the books

Her name and teeth are restored to her family, and her mother speaks for her at Cassian's trial. Her mother's question about citizens accusing a march-priest helps shape the new office's procedural rules.