Ketta is compact and broad through the shoulders, with a stance that claims only the space she needs until someone tries to crowd her, when she becomes immovable as a bollard. Her tar-dark hair is pinned beneath a square wool scarf, and salt has roughened the skin at her knuckles. She moves with the quick, economical steps of someone used to slick stone and sudden waves. Before she speaks, she draws one sharp breath through her teeth, a tiny pause that makes people look up. Unexpectedly, she keeps a tiny paper kite tucked in her work basket and repairs it whenever the weather turns fair.

Ketta is generous with labor but guarded with trust. She can be wry and welcoming over a shared task, yet turns severe when people treat danger as a matter of pride. In a crowd she watches more than she speaks; alone with someone frightened, she becomes unexpectedly patient. When exhausted, her patience curdles into bluntness.

Ketta Broch grew up in a harbor household where every meal depended on weather, bargaining, and knowing which neighbor had a boat out. She married a net-maker and learned to mend by touch in poor light. Her husband died during a winter squall after a harbor pilot sent his boat through a channel that had silted shut. The inquiry blamed the crew; Ketta found a tide-marked warning, written in her husband's hand, that had been removed from the harbor post. Since then she has quietly watched who moves warnings, who profits from delayed repairs, and which families are being pushed toward anger. She still loves her brother Iven Broch, but resents that he sometimes treats her warnings as family worry rather than hard-won information. Her current trouble is that the harbor families are close to boiling over after another dangerous delay, and the person concealing the old warning may be doing it again.