Adrik moves with the quiet economy of someone who has spent decades walking banks and reeds. He favors the river's colors in his clothing and gear so he often looks like a knot of dark green and wet brown. His face is weathered with deep crow's-feet and a network of pale fishing-line scars across his left cheek that trace a long-ago skirmish with a marsh warg. He keeps a thin braid of silver wire woven through the tip of his beard as a token from his wife. Unexpectedly, his left forearm bears a neat patch of bright, childish embroidery sewn over an old wound. When he walks he favors the toes of his boots, as if always testing the ground ahead.