Tepka has a compact, slightly forward-leaning frame and moves with the careful economy of someone accustomed to working around sharp tools. His brown skin is usually dusted with pale wood flour, and tiny feather barbs cling to his sleeves like stubborn burrs. He keeps his thick black hair combed into a ruler-straight side part, then checks that part whenever a customer mentions a bad bargain. His eyes are dark hazel, alert to crooked grain and concealed hands. The unexpected detail is his immaculate, glossy fingernails, buffed like a courtier's despite the resin, shavings, and glue of his trade. People leave with the impression of a man who could spot a warped shaft across a crowded room, and who would notice if they moved his chair.

Tepka is hospitable but watchful: he likes helping people become capable, yet distrusts anyone who treats skill as permission to dominate. On a calm day he is dryly funny and generous with advice; when business is threatened he grows stubborn and exacting. He can be tender with beginners and unexpectedly sharp with veterans who boast about violence. He wants to be left out of other people's causes, but cannot ignore a person in danger.

Tepka learned fletching from his mother, who ran a traveling repair stall and taught him that a badly balanced arrow could betray a hunter before any monster did. At nineteen, he settled in the riverside market town of Kettleford and opened Bow-End in a former cooper's shed. Years later, during the winter siege of a nearby watch post, Tepka volunteered to repair the defenders' arrows. He watched his closest friend, a watch runner named Ivo, leave with a bundle Tepka had fletched and never return. The arrows were sound; the route was not. Since then, Tepka insists on asking customers where their weapons are going, though he knows he has no right to demand an answer. He still sends a small parcel of mended gear each spring to Ivo's widowed sister, Nessa, who refuses to call the parcels charity. His present trouble is a shortage of straight ash shafts after an upstream flood ruined the old coppice, while a well-connected buyer keeps trying to purchase all the remaining stock. Tepka wants to secure a new supply without letting Bow-End become a tool for anyone's private militia.