Fekru is a compact, broad-waisted human with a quick, measured way of moving, as if every step were being weighed for cost. His skin has a warm brown tone and a fine sheen of spice oil; his black hair is clipped close at the sides and combed into stubborn ridges. He smells distinctly of toasted cumin, damp wool, and the peppery resin he uses to seal parcels, and knows it: he offers customers a clove to chew before they mention it. He occupies more conversational space than his size suggests, leaning over a counter as though it were a map. Unexpectedly for a hard-driving trader, he keeps a small, carefully tended collection of pressed flowers between the pages of his account book.

Fekru is generous with practical help but exacting about promises. He likes people and enjoys a lively market, yet he watches every exchange for signs that someone is being exploited. When calm, he is sociable and playful; when a deal turns dishonest, he becomes terse and relentless. He wants to trust his employees, but his fear of another preventable loss makes him hover over their work.

Fekru grew up weighing dried fruit at his mother's stall in the river market of Dunbar Bend, learning that an honest scale could still be used to tell a dishonest story. At seventeen, he joined a caravan as a pack clerk. During a winter crossing, a bridge plank failed beneath a wagon carrying medicine; the caravan master ordered the load abandoned to save his own expensive fabrics. Fekru cut the traces, saved the medicine, and lost his position for it. The people in the next valley survived a fever because of that choice, and one of them, a healer named Zdrava, has remained his closest friend and most relentless conscience. Years later he built a modest trading business with borrowed stock and a reputation for finding practical goods at fair prices. Now a former supplier, Kvarc, is pressuring him to sell spoiled lamp oil as clean stock, while a run of unpaid bills threatens the stall and the apprentices who depend on it. Fekru is trying to uncover who has been sabotaging shipments without letting his customers know how close the business is to failing.