Valla moves like a man who has practiced every step in an alley and a ballroom. He stands with the easy poise of someone comfortable both behind a desk and behind a blade. His skin is the dusky, iron-tinged red of dried embers; in certain lights it flashes with fine, almost metallic veins at his temples. His horns curve back and down, polished to a bruise-black gloss; one of them bears a thin, silvery notch—an old street scar he runs a thumb across when thinking. He wears a neatly trimmed goatee braided into a single plait tied with a scrap of red ribbon stolen from the first signet ring he ever owned. His movements are economical and precise, the kind of economy that can snap into violence without warning. Contradiction clings to him: while his face is almost always composed and amused, his left hand is ringless but stained with nicotine and ink, a constant sign he both smokes and keeps ledgers himself.