Slim and deliberate in movement, Maelis looks like someone who practices swordwork as prayer. He wears his left sleeve pinned back to reveal a faint lattice of burn scars running from wrist to forearm, the kind that catch light and look almost like veins of silver when he spellslingers. His rapier is always within easy reach; it rests in a low-slung sheath patched with old library stamps and merchant seals. He favors layered clothing — a charcoal linen shirt under a faded cobalt vest embroidered with archaic sigils, a weathered travel cloak that has been mended too many times to be new and too well preserved to be old — and a narrow metal circlet tucked beneath his hairline, flattened where it once was dented. He tilts his head when listening as if aligning himself to a subtle rhythm only he can hear. Unexpectedly, his left eyebrow is braided with a single thin leather thong with three tiny bells tied into it; the bells are mute most of the time but clink faintly when he is about to lie.