Maereth moves like someone who measures rhythm and light. She wears her posture as if framing a window: straight-backed, chin often tilted so that catchlights fall across her face. Her hands are scarred and ink-stained—long-fingered, precise—and she tends to fold them as if inspecting an invisible object. She favors layered stoles of translucent fabrics that catch sun and lamp alike; strips of blown glass beads are woven through her hair and the hems of her sleeves clink when she gestures. Unexpectedly, she walks with the slow, deliberate limp of an old dancer, a contradiction to her otherwise exact, mercantile bearing. Up close, faint silver veins trace across the whites of her eyes when she’s tired—an indication of a past trial with corrosive vapors. The overall impression: a brilliant, immaculately kept woman whose beauty is made of facets and kept in reserve.