Toma is a compact, broad-backed dwarf whose weather-browned skin has the dry, pebbled texture of old saddle leather, with pale lines at the wrists where gloves once shielded him from sun and grit. He moves with a careful hitch in his left knee, then plants each boot as if testing the ground for hidden cracks. His beard is braided into two blunt ropes, threaded with tiny brass washers rather than beads. The unexpected detail is a small, beautifully folded paper moth pinned inside his collar, carefully protected from rain and grease.

Toma is stubbornly dependable but uncomfortable when anyone thanks him; he will endure a dangerous task for a stranger yet bristle if they call him a hero. In calm company he can be dryly funny and patient with beginners. Under pressure he becomes brisk and exacting, and when grief catches him off guard he turns abruptly practical.

Toma spent decades guarding caravans and repairing wheels, axles, and harness under the road name of his trade. He came to Ombre after a spring flood stranded a wagon train outside the settlement. While the others argued over whose fault it was, he rebuilt a bridge winch from scavenged parts and got the wagons across. He stayed, first as a repair hand, then as the person everyone called when a gate or cart failed at the worst possible time. Years ago, a panicked mule team overturned a wagon during a night attack. Toma chose to hold a broken axle in place so the children beneath it could crawl free; the wagon crushed his left knee. The children survived, but he still blames himself for the driver, his friend Hedd, who died holding the reins. Now Toma keeps Ombre's carts and water-lift working, while arguing with the settlement reeve about a dangerously cracked culvert. His former apprentice, Veli, wants him to stop risking his knee and take a quieter job. Toma has not told Veli that the culvert's hidden stonework bears the same maker's mark as the bridge where Hedd died.