Reko looks as if he has been built from dock pilings: compact, square through the shoulders, and held together by the practiced economy of a man who has hauled wet rope for decades. His skin is weather-browned, with pale salt tracks often dried at his temples. His dark hair is clipped close at the sides and stubbornly curls over his crown. He stands with his weight slightly forward, as if expecting a deck to roll beneath him, and lets his arms hang loose until there is work to do. Before speaking, he draws a short breath through his nose and gives one soft, dry click of his tongue. The unexpected detail is that he keeps a tiny sprig of fresh mint tucked inside his breast pocket, carefully watered in a corked vial.

Reko is patient with people learning a hard job and impatient with anyone who pretends a dangerous job is simple. In a crisis he becomes decisive, even blunt; at a quiet meal he is unexpectedly funny, though he denies making jokes. He wants to be dependable, but resents being treated as if his only value is carrying the heaviest load.

Reko was born in the upland dwarf settlement of Kivak, where his family quarried slate and repaired mill races. As a young man, he left after a spring flood tore through the valley and carried away his younger brother, Toma. Reko had been ordered to hold a sluice gate; when it jammed, he chose to save two trapped workers instead of abandoning them to reach Toma. The workers lived. Toma did not. Reko still believes the choice was right, and still hates himself for making it. He found work in the river-port of Nambara, a name brought by the first boatwrights from a distant homeland and never changed to suit the local tongue. He became a dock guard, then a foreman, respected for settling disputes without drawing steel. He sends part of his wages to his widowed sister, Veli, who runs the family quarry, and trades letters with her through a traveling peddler. Lately, cargoes have gone missing from the wharves, and the harbor master, Dzelu, has ordered Reko to blame the riverfolk before an inquiry can expose the real thefts. Reko is quietly collecting evidence while trying to keep his crew from being used as muscle in a feud.