Appearance

Short and stocky, with the broad face and heavy jaw of Mootland stock. Not fat, but not lean either — a girth that has very little to do with muscle, and which sits oddly on a man who spends his days squeezing through gaps. Dark curly hair, kept short because long hair and crawlspaces don't mix.

Layered peasant's clothes gone ragged at the cuffs and permanently mud-streaked to the knee. Heavy boots, worn and unfashionable. A coil of snare wire over one shoulder, a brass lantern, a cord of dead rats at his belt, and a sling tucked where he can reach it. Sewn to his front is a faded heraldic badge — his licence to work the tunnels, and the first thing he waves at anyone who tries to move him on.

He moves quietly without meaning to. Twenty years of not startling things you're trying to catch will do that.

Bruno is a wire-haired terrier the colour of dishwater, with one chewed ear and no visible fear response. He goes first into everything.

Personality

Cheerful in a way that's slightly too much for the job. He talks constantly — to Bruno, to strangers, to the dark — and he is very funny about horrible things. People find this either enormously reassuring or deeply unsettling, and he has never much minded which.

Underneath it he is a professional. Rat catching is a trade with rules: you check the exits before you go in, you don't crawl into anything you can't back out of, His courage is entirely the working kind — he goes into the dark because that's the job, not because he isn't frightened.