Bela has a compact, weather-browned face, a jaw made broad by years of clenching against river spray, and dark hair braided close to her scalp so it cannot catch on ferry rigging. Her oilskin coat shines at the shoulders and is salt-stiff along the cuffs. She walks with the careful, side-to-side balance of someone always accounting for a moving deck. Within a minute, people notice that her gaze goes to hands, exits, and the river's surface before it settles on anyone's face. A small wooden toy her son carved hangs from her belt, its nose polished nearly flat by her thumb.

Bela is generous with food and shelter but exacting about rules aboard her ferry. She can be wry and matter-of-fact when fixing a problem, then unexpectedly tender with frightened children or tired animals. She has the patience to wait out a dangerous current but almost none for a vague answer about Garen. When ashamed or afraid, she becomes busier rather than more open.

Bela was born on a ferry and learned the river before she learned letters. Her mother, Efa, kept the crossing at a place locals call Last Chance, a name left over from a flood-season warning that no one had the heart to change. Bela took over its daily work when Efa's knees began to fail. Years ago, Bela's son Garen vanished after taking a job carrying sealed cargo upriver. Tovaren, a traveling mapmaker and occasional passenger, was the last person Bela knows to have spoken with him. Tovaren gave Bela a scrap of a route map and admitted that Garen had asked about a disused landing beyond the marsh. Bela has searched in spare hours ever since, following rumors and asking questions that sometimes put her ferry business at risk. Efa wants her to stop before grief swallows the life she still has. Bela loves her mother and knows the warning is sensible, but she cannot accept that Garen simply chose to disappear. Current troubles include a failing ferry chain, growing toll demands from the reeve's men, and the fear that the next flood will take both her livelihood and whatever trace of her son remains.