Joren Vale is broad shouldered and weather worn, with river-browned skin that looks permanently windchapped and a face carved into hard planes by years of squinting across fog and floodlight. His left knee clicks when he walks, but he hides it by moving with a slow, deliberate roll of the hips, as if every step is a decision. He wears a surprising touch of finery beneath his work coat, a faded blue waist sash embroidered with silver reeds, the only piece of his life before Breton that he still treats with care. His hands are thick, scarred, and stained with ink at the fingertips from ledgers kept too often in rain and candle soot. He gives the impression of a man who has spent half his life looking at the water and the other half daring it to blink first.