Oruv is a broad-shouldered, salt-weathered Sirenkin with pebbled skin that catches the light like wet slate. Their movements are unhurried and economical, as if every step has been measured against a tide chart. A short mantle hangs badly from one shoulder, repeatedly let out and resewn as their frame changed; its hem is patched with scraps of sailcloth from three ports. The detail no one expects of a celebrated mediator is that they wear a child's bright yellow knitted mitten on a cord at their belt, carefully mended but much too small to fit.

Patient enough to let an angry person exhaust their rehearsed speech, yet stubborn about making them answer the next plain question. In private, Oruv is dryly funny and surprisingly sentimental; in public, they are composed and exacting. They can be tender toward frightened witnesses but cold toward officials who use procedure to silence them. They dislike being praised, though they have learned to use their fame to get people into the same room.

Oruv was born among the Sirenkin dock families of Salthesh, where arguments over berths, salvage, and storm fees were as routine as mending nets. They learned to listen while carrying messages between fishers who would not share a room. Years ago, a wrecked grain barge sparked a feud among three ports: each accused the others of withholding rescue boats and stealing survivors' cargo. Oruv persuaded the port councils to let each side sing its testimony in public, one witness at a time, so that names, timings, and remembered details could be heard without interruption. The performance exposed a shared lie planted by a panicked harbor official, and the feud ended before the next fishing season. The event made Oruv famous, though they privately credit the witnesses rather than themselves. During the wreck, Oruv failed to reach a child named Efa before the tide took her. Efa's mitten, returned by a survivor, is the one possession they never put away. Oruv still corresponds with Efa's father, Shess, who wants the old case reopened because the official who falsified the rescue record is now a respected port elder. Oruv's present problem is that the three ports want them to mediate a new dispute over a seawall, while each expects them to endorse its version of the past.