A rugged, athletic human with weather-darkened skin, a squared jaw, and a neatly trimmed beard threaded with a few pale hairs. His short dark hair is crushed flat beneath a battered tricorn. He stands in a ready, balanced stance, weight slightly forward, cutlass angled to catch the light. His left hand has exactly three fingers: thumb, index, and middle, the other two lost long ago. The remaining fingers are thickened and rope-rough, and he grips tools with practiced economy. His expression holds a contemptuous curl, though his eyes continually measure exits and hands. Unexpectedly, he keeps a tiny sprig of mint tucked behind one hatband, replacing it whenever it dries.

Leko is contemptuous of swagger and tender toward frightened deckhands, sometimes in the same breath. He makes cold calculations under pressure, then quietly spends his own share to keep a crew member fed. When relaxed, he is dryly funny and surprisingly patient; when someone threatens his people, his restraint snaps into direct, economical violence.

Leko learned the sea on a cramped coastal trader, where he hauled wet rope and slept beside barrels that leaked brine. He joined Captain Efa's crew for better pay, then stayed because the captain treated him as a person rather than another pair of hands. During a mutiny at the reef-choked inlet locals call the Old Wren, Leko held a hatch against the attackers while Efa got the youngest deckhands into the launch. A snapped boarding blade took two fingers from his left hand. The mutiny failed, but the ship was lost and Efa vanished in the smoke and surf. Leko now commands the small, uneasy crew of the Gull's Teeth, a vessel named for the weed-choked shoal it shelters behind. His first mate, Neri, wants to sell their ship and disappear; Leko keeps risking their lives on rumors that Efa survived. He has recently learned that a harbor magistrate, Olan, is quietly selling the names of wanted sailors to the same privateers who hunted Efa.