Tamas has a broad, weight-bearing frame and the steady, slightly forward lean of someone accustomed to testing railings with his shoulder. His coat hangs square and badly fitted across the back, but its cuffs are patched with neat, tiny stitches in three shades of thread. He moves with economical care, placing each boot as if checking a plank before trusting it. A bright brass measuring caliper, polished far beyond the rest of his tools, is pinned inside his collar where it catches the light when he turns. He leaves the impression of a man who has already noticed the loose board beneath your feet.

Practical and fair-minded, Tamas gives people space to make their own decisions until those decisions endanger others. He can be patient with a merchant's complicated livelihood and impatient with a worker who ignores a simple safety rule. When relaxed, he makes dry jokes and remembers everyone's preferred tea; when frightened or under pressure, he becomes exacting and begins asking for measurements as if precision could hold back the river.

Tamas inherited a share in The Ninth Landing from his mother, who helped reclaim the market's foundations from a drowned marsh. He learned the work by hauling silt and listening to older sluice keepers argue over water levels. Years ago, during an autumn surge, a jammed gate threatened to drown the lower stalls. Tamas ordered the market cleared, then stayed behind with a handful of workers to free the mechanism. His younger brother, Heddan, was swept off the service walk and never found. Tamas has since made safety rules public, visible, and difficult to bend, even when they cost him business. He gives stallholders broad freedom in their trade, but no one gets to improvise with the waterworks. He still exchanges terse letters with Heddan's daughter, Sella, who believes the old gate was sabotaged. A recent run of fresh tool marks on the sluice pins has turned that old suspicion into an immediate problem.