Veylan is the sort of person you remember because you can't decide whether you like him. He stands with a dancer's loose balance and a trader's stillness, moving like a man who knows precisely how much space to give another. His skin is faintly iridescent in certain lights—pale as old ivory but threaded with the sheen of pearl—so that when he tilts his head fragments of light run along the planes of his face. His hair is an improbable, sun-bleached blond kept long and braided with tiny copper coins and a single braided strip of black kelp; it contrasts sharply with the faintly scaled texture on the back of his forearms, a reminder of his elder-spawn heritage. He wears a perpetual, wide smile: friendly, overly earnest, and just a hair too toothy — an expression that warms at first and then sets a small, insoluble worry in a person's stomach. Unexpectedly, he smells faintly of old parchment and sea salt, and he often leaves behind the faint sound of distant bell-tone when he departs, as if some small chime clung to his clothing. Contradiction clings to him: his eyes are a clear, pupil-less gold that read every bargain and a face that is almost relentlessly benign.