Romulus's ancient, sharp-witted mother, who unlocks Lysander's buried grief and enlists him to free her son and stop Dido's war.
Gaia au Raa, mother of Romulus and the Rim's crone-matriarch, has Lysander smuggled through Sungrave's secret tunnels to her austere heartwood chamber, where she drops her feigned senility. Playing an ancient piano her husband gave her, she coaxes Lysander to touch the keys—and a requiem pours from him, unlocking a memory his eidetic mind had buried: his mother, who taught him to play, and a whole locked life beneath the shadows. Wry, indiscreet, and mourning her own dead kin (even 'that noxious scorpion' Bellerephon), she reveals her true aim: she never wanted Dido's war.
She reunites Lysander with his tortured Blue pilot Pytha and lays her cards bare—Dido means to quietly murder both after Romulus's trial—then proposes they survive by freeing her son from the Dust Cells, so her daughter Vela's loyal legions can storm Sungrave and end the coup. An old friend of Lorn, weary of empire and the 'Venusian strumpet' who would drag the Rim into endless war, she arms Lysander with her hasta razor, Shizuka, a transponder, and her ancient Obsidian Goroth as guide.
An ancient, crook-backed Gold woman, slight and paper-pale with blue-veined skin and fragile wineglass-stem wrists, leaning on a cane and her Obsidian's arm; sharp cloudy eyes, a thin white pipe forever in hand, in a thick kimono.
Romulus's mother and the Rim's hidden power; the war-weary matriarch who schemes to free her son and spare the Rim Dido's war.