Hek is a rangy, smoke-brown tabaxi with fur that clumps into dark, damp points along his forearms and tail. He moves with a careful, heel-light slink, testing every plank before committing his weight. His broad jaw is crowded with blunt, uneven teeth; when he laughs, he bares them all, but when he eats he meticulously turns each morsel in his mouth as if checking it for poison. He leaves an impression of a wet alley that has learned to walk upright.

Hek is suspicious of easy promises but unexpectedly generous with food and shelter. He is grimly practical in a crisis, yet sentimental about small things he can repair: a cracked cup, a child's toy, a torn net. When rested, he can be dryly funny; when exhausted, he becomes curt and watches every exit.

Hek was born above a rope-maker's shop in the flooded river city of Namar, where his mother patched nets and his father vanished into a winter flood. As a child he learned the city's underways by following rats to the dry pockets where they nested. At sixteen, a fever swept through the stilt wards after a sluice gate jammed; Hek found the blockage, but only after his younger sister Tavi had died. The failure turned his childhood knack into a trade. Now he traps rats for shopkeepers and carries messages through drains for the ferrymen. He pays the rent on his mother's room, though they rarely speak without arguing about whether the city can still be saved. His closest ally is Dren, a ferryman who keeps one boat unregistered for night work. Hek has recently found rats abandoning whole blocks and gathering near a sealed pumping station, while the city watch insists nothing is wrong.