Brucz is a compact deep gnome with the dense, carefully balanced posture of someone who has spent half his life working beneath collapsing ceilings. His skin is slate-brown and dry at the knuckles, with pale mineral dust permanently settled in the creases of his hands. His beard is clipped close around the mouth but left long beneath the jaw, where it has been braided with three dull copper rings and a tiny clay bead. He moves with startling quietness, placing each foot as though testing a floor before trusting it. Within a minute of meeting him, people notice that he rarely looks at faces. His eyes travel instead to lintels, hearthstones, roof joints, door hinges, and the spaces behind furniture. The contradiction is that this intensely cautious man laughs loudly and without embarrassment, throwing his head back like a tavern singer whenever something genuinely delights him.