An elderly kenku with close-laid charcoal feathers, silvered at the throat and crown like soot dusted with frost. His face is sharply intelligent, framed by a neat fan of cheek feathers that he trims to matching points. He moves in measured, economical steps, head tilting in small precise increments as if weighing each sound. Before answering, he often rubs the brass clasp at his collar without seeming to notice. The effect is less frail sage than weathered watchman: a bird who has spent a lifetime listening at doors and remembers what the doors heard.

He is cautious about trust but unexpectedly generous with people who admit uncertainty. In calm company he is dryly funny and asks careful questions; when danger threatens someone vulnerable, his reserve gives way to decisive, almost reckless action. He prizes truth, yet knows how easily a true sound can be made to serve a lie.

Yezhket was born among the roof-dwellers of Tallowmarket, where his family carried messages between bell towers and workshops. As a young lookout, he learned to copy a watchman's whistle, a baker's call, and the clatter of a patrol's boots. During the winter riots, he imitated the city's evacuation bell to draw a crowd away from a collapsing granary. The crowd survived, but the false alarm let a gang loot the fever ward. The guilt changed him: he stopped treating sounds as tricks and began keeping an exact record of who said what, and why. For decades he served as a discreet witness and investigator, settling disputes by replaying remembered voices. He now rents a cramped room above the old cooperage and advises people who cannot afford official justice. His closest friend is Tikka, a human bell-founder who knows his habits better than he does. His former apprentice, Goran, works for the magistrate and believes Yezhket's methods have become meddling. At present, a forged recording of the city reeve's voice is being used to incite violence, and Yezhket recognizes a tiny breath-click in it as his own.