Fitzjerr is neat in the way of a man who believes disorder is evidence. He has a compact, attentive face, a blunt jaw, and teeth that meet in a slightly uneven line; when he laughs, which is rare but genuine, the whole jaw shifts sideways with a small click. He takes up very little room at a table, yet somehow makes everyone else feel they are sitting for examination. His whiskers are clipped into two precise grey points, an early streak of silver made more conspicuous by dark brown hair. He moves in short, economical steps, pausing at thresholds to inspect the floor before he crosses. His black coat has an old magistrate's cut, softened at the elbows and polished at the cuffs from years of handling documents. A monocle hangs from a cord at his breast. The unexpected detail: he keeps a pocketful of sugared fennel seeds and offers them gravely to nervous witnesses, as if they were a formal part of the proceedings.

Fitzjerr is courteous but not soothing: he gives people time to answer, then notices when they use that time to build a story. He is patient with the frightened and relentless with the self-important. In a quiet room he can be almost companionable, sharing fennel seeds and dry jokes; under pressure he becomes methodical and stubborn, treating every pause as evidence. He wants justice to be humane, yet his habit of reducing people to statements and inconsistencies can make him seem colder than the officials he despises.

Fitzjerr was raised above a provincial copyist's shop, where his mother taught him to read contracts before he could afford books of his own. He apprenticed to Magistrate Orsik Vell, learning that the smallest alteration in a witness's wording could change who went hungry or who went free. His formative rupture came during the Glassford ferry inquiry: he accepted a clean-looking seal as genuine and helped convict a ferryman for a murder committed by a well-connected landholder. The ferryman died in custody before Fitzjerr uncovered the forged wax beneath the seal's outer layer. Since then, Fitzjerr has treated every signature as a claim that must be tested, not a truth to be trusted. He left the magistrate's service and now works as a scholar-investigator, tracing forged orders, fraudulent inheritances, and missing people. He still sends money to the ferryman's daughter, Sibel, who has never forgiven him and never refuses it. His former mentor, Orsik, quietly supplies cases but fears Fitzjerr will expose the magistrate's role in burying the ferry inquiry. Fitzjerr is currently following a trail of copied seals that link several disappearances to a court clerk who once taught him.