Corrin sits hunched beneath the pier lantern, seeming at first to be another bundled coil of net and oilskin. His face is wind-creased and browned, his beard cut short with a knife, and his shoulders roll with the careful, tide-timed motion of someone who has spent decades balancing on wet planks. He smells strongly of tarred hemp, old fish, and the sharp soap he uses in a losing attempt to scrub the harbor from his hands. The surprising detail is a tiny, meticulously maintained brass music box tucked inside his coat; he winds it before dawn, though he claims not to care for music.

Gruff because he distrusts easy promises, but scrupulously fair once terms are clear. He is patient with damaged tools and impatient with people who waste other people's time. In a crisis he becomes brisk and unexpectedly gentle; when ashamed, he retreats into work and makes himself difficult to reach.

Corrin learned net-mending from his mother on the long pier at Greyhook, a harbor whose name began as a shortened local phrase nobody remembers now. He married young, raised a daughter, and spent most of his life keeping boats working rather than making his own fortune. Twenty years ago, during a storm, his son Bram was lost near the lighthouse rocks. Corrin had urged him to take a boat out to help a stranded crew; the sea returned the boat but not the boy. Since then Corrin has refused to go near those rocks, though he never tells the story unless the weather turns. His daughter Kesta, now a harbor pilot, believes he is punishing himself and visits less often than either of them admits they want. Corrin owes Harbourmaster Terek a favor because Terek quietly hid the fact that Corrin once rowed contraband medicine past the harbor toll during a fever outbreak. Now Terek is pressing him to ferry a sealed parcel after dark, and Corrin suspects the favor is being used to draw him back toward the lighthouse shoals.