Tarek is a compact gnome with a weather-round face, a nose dusted white by salt, and a tidy beard divided into two blunt forks. He moves with the quick, economical steps of someone accustomed to narrow stairs and crowded maps, stopping so sharply that people behind him sometimes nearly collide. His coat is tailored for a taller person and bunches at the shoulders; its elbows have been patched with sailcloth and its cuffs are scrubbed nearly bare. The unexpected detail is a bright yellow child's mitten pinned carefully inside his lapel, where only its little thumb peeks out.

Tarek is patient with frightened people but impatient with careless certainty. He can be dryly funny over supper and mercilessly exact in a council meeting. He admires Ysabet's nerve yet resents how she now uses the loyalty earned during the siege. When grief surfaces, he becomes brisk and practical; when the danger is immediate, he is unexpectedly decisive.

Tarek was born among the tide stairs below the Salt Gate, where his family kept a narrow public oven and learned which officials could be trusted by the way they weighed flour. He became a clerk, then a quartermaster, and finally the chief adviser Ysabet relied on when the Gate was besieged. During the defense, Tarek predicted that the attackers would divert the brine channel and urged Ysabet to open a sluice before the water could be turned against the defenders. The plan held the Gate, but the sudden flood ruined the low district and carried away his sister's son, whose mitten Tarek still keeps pinned inside his coat. Since then, Tarek has treated victory as a bill that someone must eventually pay. He has served Ysabet through years of rebuilding, arranging food stores, truces, and watch rotations, but now questions her rule: she increasingly uses emergency powers to silence criticism and calls every delay a threat. Tarek still cares for her, respects her courage, and fears what she is becoming. He meets each week with the neighborhood oven keepers, who want him to challenge her openly, while Ysabet's new captain watches his movements.