Wazir is a narrow, stooped man whose weather-darkened skin is stippled with pale freckles and roughened by years of river wind. His white hair grows in wiry tufts beneath a wool cap, and his grey-brown eyes keep measuring the water even while he talks. He moves with a ferryman's practiced economy aboard his boat, knees loose and weight shifting before the hull rolls; on land he plants each foot as though testing a slippery plank. His coat is patched at the elbows with mismatched sailcloth, but he keeps a tiny brass bell polished bright and tied to his belt. It chimes against his hip when he walks, a cheerful sound at odds with his sour, river-soaked smell.

Wazir is attentive and capable when a boat is in danger, yet rambling and unreliable when he is drinking. He can be warm with stranded travelers and prickly with anyone who treats his stories as a joke. His superstition sits uneasily beside a practical mind that can read current and weather better than most sober folk.

Wazir learned the Wend by rowing beside his mother, who ferried drovers and market folk long before The Lantern Lad became a regular stopping place. In his middle years, a sudden flood overturned his boat below the willow. He survived by clinging to a branch while his younger brother was swept away. Afterward, Wazir became meticulous about the river's moods, though drink gradually made his warnings easier to dismiss. He has spent the last decade ferrying travelers and patching his boat, insisting that the current has begun carrying strange lights beneath the willow's hanging boughs. His closest remaining tie is to the inn's keeper, who lets him sleep in the shed when the rain is hard, but has little patience for his drinking. Wazir now struggles to keep his boat seaworthy and to persuade anyone that the light is not a trick of liquor or lantern glass.