Torval moves like someone used to heavy hands and narrow spaces: measured, economical, always aware of balance. He has a face lined like oak grain — a tanned, weathered map of sun and smoke — with laugh-creased crow's feet and a thin pale scar along his left cheek from a cooper's shave-knife. His left ear is studded with three tiny bronze rings, each hammered with a different market seal. He wears a patched leather apron over a faded deep-green waistcoat; the apron is stained with pitch and copper verdigris while his sleeves are rolled to show strong forearms webbed with calluses. Unexpectedly, he favors a small, impeccably clean silk cravat the color of river reeds — an affectation at odds with his otherwise workmanlike mien. When he walks he often carries a heavy oak mallet against his shoulder like a companion, and when thinking he organizes invisible rows of barrels with his fingers as if lining them up on an unseen shelf.