Varkut is a dwarf of compact proportions and unnerving symmetry, with a sharply defined jaw, straight nose, and long, upturned eyes that give him the foxlike look of someone who has already anticipated your answer. His skin is so pale it seems almost translucent, showing faint blue veins at his temples. His shoulder-length hair falls in glossy, deeply waved obsidian locks, parted at the middle and swept down to his temples. He moves with measured economy: never hurried, never quite still, and always turning his head a fraction before the rest of him, as if listening for a door opening in another room. He leaves an impression of immaculate composure with something hot and watchful pressing just beneath it. Unexpectedly, he keeps a tiny, fragrant herb garden in a silver traveling case and can identify every plant by touch.

Varkut is considerate in ways that make people suspicious: he remembers preferences, keeps appointments, and notices who has been left out of a conversation. Yet he can be merciless when someone breaks a promise that others depend on. In private, he is unexpectedly patient with plants and children; under pressure, his humor turns dry and his courtesy becomes exacting. He craves genuine affection but instinctively tries to define its terms.

Varkut was born among the deep-forge dwarves of a mountain hold, where his translucent pallor and red, slit-pupiled eyes made him a subject of fearful speculation. His mother, Drazha, insisted he was simply sickly; his father, Olek, taught him the family craft of setting gemstones into ceremonial blades. At twenty-seven, Varkut discovered the truth during a cave-in that trapped a mining crew. The trapped miners begged him to bargain with anything that would listen. Something answered from the crack beneath the mountain, and Varkut accepted a pact that opened the stone and saved the survivors, but left him carrying a demon's nature in a dwarf's body. Years later, he became a negotiator and enforcer for the infernal court known as the Ninth Survey, where he learned that a promise can be sharper than a weapon. He now operates in the surface city of Kestrel's Cough, named for the sulfurous wind that rolls through its old aqueducts. His former mentor, Zorik, wants him back in the court's service; his estranged sister, Branka, wants him to sever the pact before it consumes their family's name. Varkut is secretly trying to find a way to do both without sacrificing either.