Savax Dren is a compact, sharp-featured human woman with the controlled stillness of someone forever waiting for a measurement to settle. Her brown skin has a dry, coppery undertone from years beneath dust-coated lamps, and her hands are marked by pale ruler-calluses along the thumb and first finger. Her dark hair is drawn into a severe knot and pinned with tiny iron nails, each head polished bright except for the one above her right temple, which has been worn almost smooth by nervous touching. She moves in short, exact steps, never quite brushing a wall or person, as though every corridor has an invisible boundary line. The unexpected thing about her is her delicacy: despite her severe clothes and bureaucratic manner, she has the soft, careful hands of a miniature-maker and handles broken objects more tenderly than living people.