Miri Valebough is all angles and composure, an elf whose presence feels like cool ink drying on warm paper. She stands with a receptionist's precision, shoulders straight, chin slightly lifted, as if she has been trained by years of polite conflict. Her hands are ink-stained at the knuckles, yet the fingers move with a pianist's delicacy. She wears a severe blue-green waistcoat over a linen blouse, the cuffs rolled to reveal a thin lattice of old scar lines along her wrists. A tiny brass bell hangs at her belt, and she keeps one boot heel ever so slightly raised when thinking, like a swan balancing on a reed. The unexpected thing about her is the bright patchwork scarf of fisher-cloth around her throat, cheerful as a tavern flag and completely at odds with her otherwise austere, clerkish appearance.