Pernilongo is so tall and spare that his threadbare coat seems hung from a rack of elbows. His neck cranes forward as if he is always trying to hear the next conversation before it starts. He moves in little start-stop jolts, then folds himself close to whoever has earned a whisper. Soot and machine oil cling to him, along with a sharp smell of damp paper; he knows about the oil but insists the paper smell is somebody else's fault. His goggles usually ride on his forehead, where their brass rims leave twin clean tracks through the grime. Unexpectedly for an informant who lives by rumor, he keeps a tiny, carefully tended pot of bright yellow mustard flowers on his market stall.

Pernilongo is suspicious by profession but unexpectedly sentimental in private. With strangers he is twitchy, testing every question for a hidden price; with children and exhausted workers he becomes patient and almost fussy. He can be sharp when someone wastes his time, yet he will risk his own safety to correct a warning that might endanger a crowd.

Pernilongo grew up above a pump station in the Sump, where his mother repaired ether-lamp wicks and his father disappeared into a work crew after a tunnel collapse. At twelve, he learned that scraps of overheard conversation could buy supper. He became a runner, then an informant, gathering names and routes for whoever could keep him fed. The change came during the Floodglass evacuation: he passed a warning about a failing sluice to a foreman who paid well, only to learn that the foreman had delayed sounding the alarm so his investors could move their cargo first. Pernilongo helped guide trapped families through a drain channel, but a young runner named Tavi was lost in the surge. Since then, he sells information cautiously and keeps a flower pot alive in Tavi's old market nook. His present trouble is a growing list of buyers who each believe they own his silence.