Jory looks like a man shaped by years of hauling stone and wading through cold runoff. His shoulders are broad, his posture pitched slightly forward, and he walks with a careful heel-to-toe tread, testing each floor as if it might conceal a hollow channel. His hair is combed flat with an almost fussy center part, while his beard is trimmed to an even, practical line. A little brass whistle on a frayed cord rests against his breastbone, its mouthpiece polished bright by his thumb while the rest has gone green with age. He gives the impression of a dependable laborer who has spent a long time listening for trouble beneath the ground.

Jory is cautious about structures and impulsively brave about people. He dislikes grand speeches, yet will argue stubbornly for the value of every life in a room. With strangers he is guarded and procedural; with workers he becomes warm, teasing, and quick to share food. Under pressure he grows blunt and decisive, then afterward replays every choice as if inspecting a cracked wall.

Jory grew up in a family of canal masons, learning to read water by its sound before he could read a contract. He was working beneath the old east sluice when a floodgate failed and trapped his younger brother, Hobb, behind a collapsing spillwall. Jory had to choose between holding a support beam long enough for six workers to escape or risking the whole crew to reach Hobb. He held the beam. Hobb survived, but lost the use of one leg, and Jory has never stopped hearing the moment the beam began to split. Years later, Jory discovered that the failure had been deliberate: someone had weakened the gate to hide illegal diversions of the city's water. He copied the proof into a waterproof route-chart, then was seized by the people responsible before he could deliver it. Hobb now runs a cramped repair stall and resents Jory's habit of deciding what risks other people can bear. Jory's current problem is that his captors know he carries the chart, but do not know that he memorized the crucial measurements.