Radan is a broad, weather-browned man with a square head and a habit of standing as if he is bracing a building against a storm. His thick hands are ridged and flattened from years of mill work, their nails permanently dark with grease and grain dust. He takes up more room than he seems to notice, planting himself in doorways and leaning close to inspect a person as if checking a faulty joint. Unexpectedly, he keeps a tiny, carefully folded paper moth tucked in his hatband, and smooths it flat whenever he thinks no one is looking. His movements are economical and weighty, with a millwright's instinct for where pressure will fall.

Radan is protective but not naturally tender, observant but capable of mistaking suspicion for insight. In ordinary company he is blunt and useful; with frightened workers he becomes unexpectedly patient. When Mary challenges him, he tries to stay measured, but his worry emerges as a stream of practical objections. Faced with evidence against his assumptions, he can reconsider, though never without first defending the care behind them.

Radan spent most of his life repairing waterwheels and sluice gates at the settlement's mill. He raised his daughter Mary there, teaching her to recognize a failing beam by its sound and to distrust anyone who says a problem can wait until morning. Years ago, a flood tore through the mill yard while Radan was away buying iron. His wife, Edda, saved the mill workers by opening a spillway, but the effort cost her a lasting injury and left Radan with a guilt he has never managed to speak plainly about. Since then, he has tried to keep danger at arm's length by anticipating it. Mary has grown into her own life, and her connection with Ossian has unsettled him: Ossian knows things he should not, seems absent from ordinary records, and has a way of watching people without seeming to look at them. Radan is gathering small reasons to confront him, while privately fearing that his suspicions are only another attempt to control what he cannot protect.