A square-jawed dwarf with a broad, settled stance and a face that seems built to appraise a price before it appraises a person. His polished spectacles catch warehouse light in brief, sharp flashes. He wears a velvet sleeve over his left arm, its nap rubbed smooth where it brushes cargo. When someone enters a room, his eyes go first to their hands, then to the exits, then to the goods. His beard is meticulously divided into two squared braids, each bound with a tiny brass tally ring. Unexpectedly, he keeps a tiny pressed flower tucked behind one spectacle hinge, replacing it when it crumbles.

Hadrik prizes exact promises and the people who keep them, yet he sometimes bends a rule to protect someone who cannot afford to lose. In a busy warehouse he is brisk, practical, and hard to distract; at a family table he is unexpectedly sentimental and clumsy with apologies. When angered, he becomes more exacting rather than louder, and when frightened, he starts calculating aloud.

Hadrik grew up weighing sacks and settling disputes at a riverside grain scale. As a young factor, he helped his older sister, Ula, run a modest forwarding house; they were close until a winter flood ruined their stock and Hadrik chose to save the account books instead of the family’s stores. The books let them repay their workers, but Ula never forgave what he sacrificed. He came to Meridian with a borrowed cart, a reputation for exact weights, and the conviction that reliable records could keep people alive. Years of careful deals bought him three warehouses, including one that handles medicinal herbs and one that sits inconveniently close to the old flood channel. He is now locked in a dispute with his former partner, Tovin, who claims Hadrik concealed a flaw in a shared shipment contract. Hadrik’s current problem is that someone has been quietly switching marked cargo between warehouses, and the discrepancy is too small to notice unless you know exactly how he taps a table before speaking.