Gevor Vex is a compact gnome with a foxlike face, a burnished nose, and hands permanently stained with soot, ink, and lamp oil. His beard is braided into three neat ropes, but each braid ends in a different object, a brass key, a bead of green glass, and a tiny silver gear. He moves with quick, careful steps, as if he is always crossing a floor he has mapped in his head, yet he wears a heavy slate-gray coat lined in bright carnival red, the clothing of a solemn accountant made by a prankster tailor. One eye is sharp and amber, the other clouded pale from an old workshop accident, though it still seems to watch more than it should.