Alvarin moves like a man who has spent decades practicing both ceremony and command. He stands with a slight forward tilt of the shoulders that suggests perpetual attention; his gait is deliberate and measured. He wears a heavy, embroidered mantle that rustles like dried leaves and a travel-stained tabard beneath it. When he laughs his left hand tends to trace the rim of his signet ring without thinking. Unexpectedly, when he is relaxed among close friends he shucks the mantle and walks barefoot on stone as if testing the world like a child. This contradiction — ceremonious in public, footloose and blunt in private — unsettles servants and endears him to sailors.