Isolde

A transfer student who arrives at Solmere on the first morning of Arthur's second year, from Valdrun, the barren domain of the Ruined God, where nobody who goes ever comes back.

What she is like

Ch. 361, in the court by the notice board, where Arthur walks into her.

• Blue hair, and not dyed: "a deep, cold, clear blue like the sky an hour after the sun has gone, cut straight at the jaw".
• Not tall, and very straight, standing "the way people stand who have been told all their lives to take up as little room as possible and have decided instead to take up exactly as much as they need and not an inch more".
• Cold. Not unfriendly, "simply cold, the way deep water is cold, all the way down, with nothing in it to warm it and no apparent interest in being warmed".

ART: Sorry. I wasn't looking. I'm Arthur. ???: I didn't ask. [...] ???: Isolde. [...] ???: Now move. You're in front of the board.

She looks him over once, fast, "the way Briar's went over a page of figures", down to the sword on his back and his hand over his jacket pocket, and something moves behind her eyes too fast to read.

Where she comes from

Valdrun. Two second-years by the lodge say so, and say why it matters: nobody transfers in the second year, and she has.

The chapter's bracket is about her without naming her:

[ Every year begins with somebody walking in through a gate. [...] It is the ones who arrive from the places nobody comes back from that the story has been waiting for. ]

Who she knows