Tavi is a narrow-shouldered, quick-moving boy with sun-browned skin, a mop of dark hair that never stays combed, and alert hazel eyes. He looks as if he is always listening for a deck shifting underfoot. His most unexpected detail is his fastidious grooming: he scrubs the salt from his nails and keeps them neatly trimmed, though his clothes are patched and ill-fitting. He walks with a sailor's rolling balance even on dry ground, leaving the impression of a gull that has learned to hide indoors.

Tavi can be stubbornly brave about practical dangers and suddenly timid when someone offers kindness without asking for anything back. He jokes when work is hard, but becomes solemn when the sea is mentioned. He wants to be treated as grown, yet still keeps small rituals that make him feel safe.

Tavi was born aboard the fishing sloop Kindling, where his mother mended nets and his father worked the bilge pumps. When a squall broke the vessel against the shoals, Tavi was swept into a tide cave and found by shorefolk days later, dehydrated but alive. The wreck took his parents and left him with a fierce dislike of being called lucky. He was taken in by the keeper of a small harbor inn, who gave him work carrying water and cleaning boats. Tavi still returns to the cave at low tide, where driftwood and scraps of wreckage wash up. He carves little boats from them and sends them through a narrow channel in the rock, imagining that they are messages to someone lost at sea. One of those boats reaches Maelor, though Tavi has no idea who receives it. He is trying to save enough to buy passage on a coastal vessel and learn whether any other survivors from the wreck made it ashore. The innkeeper worries that his searches will draw the harbor watch, who have begun asking questions about the wreck and its cargo.