Parel has the still, forward-leaning posture of a man listening through a wall. He rests his weight on the balls of his feet and rocks almost imperceptibly, as if testing whether the ground is stable. His movements are economical, his coat swings a beat behind him, and his breathing is carefully measured until someone disputes a debt, when he takes one sharp breath through his nose. His unexpected detail is a tiny, meticulous collection of painted wooden birds pinned inside his coat, each one made from scrap mine timber.

He can be patient with a frightened debtor and merciless with a powerful employer, yet he is not sure whether this is fairness or a way to punish the people who remind him of himself. In public he is composed and precise; with children or grieving families he becomes awkwardly attentive, trying to solve practical problems rather than offer comfort. When exhausted, his restraint gives way to blunt honesty.

Parel came west as a mine tally clerk, hired to record shifts and pay advances at Siltcut, a frontier town hacked into a dry ravine. When a cave-in buried his younger brother, Toma, the owners declared the dead man's debt still due and threatened to seize the family's cabin. Parel found a second set of production figures proving the company had underpaid the miners for years. Rather than expose the fraud and risk the families' homes in court, he took a job collecting debts and quietly began altering sums in favor of the bereaved. He now answers to the mine's paymaster, Hedd, while trying to protect his widowed sister-in-law, Shona, and her son. A recent collapse uncovered a sealed shaft containing the remains of workers omitted from every official record. Parel is caught between bringing the truth into daylight and keeping the town's only steady payroll from collapsing.