There is a certain type of person who seems to have made a private agreement with the universe — not to take it too seriously, and in return, to remain thoroughly entertained by it. Valris Arvel is that type of person, distilled to something almost unreasonable.

He is a bard by trade and by temperament — wandering from town to town with a lute on his back and a tab running somewhere behind him. He sings for his supper, his ale, and occasionally his continued physical safety, and he is good enough at all three to have kept going for a decade without anything resembling a plan. He has performed at noble courts and in cellars that didn't technically have floors. He has charmed his way out of situations that had no business being survivable. He remembers everyone's name, always laughs at the right moment, and has a gift for making people feel as though they are, briefly, the most interesting person in the room.

Whether they actually are is another matter entirely.

Trouble follows Valris the way weather follows mountains — not out of malice, simply out of a kind of geographical inevitability. He never looks for it. He is, however, constitutionally incapable of leaving a dull moment alone, which amounts to much the same thing.

Underneath the wit and the easy charm and the third cup of ale lives something rather more sincere: a man who has spent ten years listening to other people's stories and is still, stubbornly, waiting to hear one worth telling. He won't admit this sober. But catch him late enough in the evening, when the fire's burned low and the tavern has gone quiet, and you might just glimpse it — that particular look of someone who hasn't given up on the world so much as grown impatient with it.

He is, in short, exceedingly good company. Just perhaps not the restful kind.