Conrad is a tall, spare man who seems carved from patience and vanity in equal measure. His posture is unnervingly exact, as if every joint has been trained by a drillmaster and every gesture rehearsed before a mirror. He has a cool, pale complexion kept immaculate by obsessive grooming, but there is an unexpected roughness to him too: the pads of his fingers are ink-stained and faintly scarred from old magical burns, as though the scholar's hands have spent years arguing with forces they were never meant to hold. He moves with the controlled grace of a duelist, yet his robes flutter behind him like the curtains of a stage magician. His mismatched eyes, one amber and one violet, create the impression that he is simultaneously appraising your worth and your funeral arrangements. The strangest detail is that his left cuff is always embroidered with tiny family crests, while the right cuff is patched with travel-worn leather, a contradiction he never explains.