Hames moves like a man who has practiced every courtesy until it became a choreography: a courteous dip of the shoulders, a hand offered just so. His face is round and soft in a way not common to his people, cheeks carry the faint, mapped creases of long smiles. Copper hair, still thick, is cropped and brushed to shine like polished pennies; a single thin braid falls behind his left ear, braided with a strip of blue river-silk given to him when he became Chair. His blue eyes are bright, watery and alert, surrounded by crepe-like rings that light up when he laughs and narrow to hawkish slits when bargaining. He favors fine raiment — layered silks and tailored frocks in shades of riverstone, always a vest with many tiny pockets — but he walks with the careful gait of someone who has spent more years in chambers and docks than on open roads. Contradiction follows him: despite aristocratic bearing he habitually wades his toes into fountains and public gutters to test currents and listen for whispers the water might carry. Around his throat hangs an amulet of luminous crystal that seems to hold a tiny, iridescent tide inside it; when he is nervous it pulses faintly like a caught moon.