Tomas Reed is a pale, narrow-faced miller with skin that looks flour-dusted even after washing, as if the river itself has bleached him. He moves with a careful, side-stepping gait learned on slick planks and wet stone, always as though he is balancing an invisible sack on one shoulder. His hands are thick at the knuckles but delicate at the fingertips, the hands of a man who can lift a grain-bag and also notice a single cracked kernel in a heap. The odd contradiction is his clothing: a severe black wool coat kept impeccably brushed and buttoned, worn over patched trousers and a stained apron that smells of oats, rain, and lamp oil. He seems both sternly proper and perpetually one gust away from collapse.