Aurel Vey moves like a blade being unsheathed slowly, every gesture deliberate enough to feel rehearsed and dangerous. He is tall and spare, with polished hands that never quite stop counting invisible beats against a thigh or the back of a chair. His clothes are evening-black velvet lined with wine-red silk, yet the cuffs are always faintly dusted with chalk and resin from the strings he polishes himself. A thin silver monocle hangs on a chain, though his sight is perfect and he wears it only when he wants people to think he is studying them. The unexpected contradiction is the faint, practical scar across his knuckles and the mud on the soles of his boots, as if this aristocrat of the stage still sometimes climbs through alleys and cellar doors to get where he means to be.