Boras

The bookkeeper who stood at Beltran Grayeras’s shoulder through everything he did in Haudh-Gwenn, and who was never his. Three weeks of the party’s winter research went into working out who the assistant was, and what came back was that they were not a citizen of the city at all. The Grayeras family had sent away for them. Boras is an Amber of the Jewels of Erôth, which is the order’s clerical grade, brought in for the expertise and paid for it, and the stone-name is the giveaway once you know to look for it.

They are a hobgoblin, non-binary, and bald from the scalp down. Hobgoblins carry visible sexual dimorphism, so the hair comes off and stays off.

Leon Yaegar explained what that meant when the party started counting Beltran’s people. Ambers are ledger administrators and are unaffiliated at a personal level; they take the contract, not the cause, and picking a fight with a Jewel is a poor way to spend an afternoon. The party’s assessment settled on negotiable, and probably neutral if it ever came to a room with weapons in it. Orvayne, naming Beltran’s four closest lieutenants from the inside, said the same thing more bluntly: Boras was hired, and hired is not loyal.

Left Off the List

Two things confirmed it. When Aldo got close enough to count the sunken-eyed among Beltran’s household he found six of them, the guards and the lieutenants both, and Boras was not one and neither was Beltran. Whatever the sword was doing to that house, it was not doing it to the bookkeeper. And when Rheem came back from inside with a report on who was always in the room, she had Beltran’s personal guards and the gem that never left his side.

So when the party finally drew up the list of people who would have to be dealt with before Haudh-Gwenn could be taken back, they went through it and struck the Jewels of Erôth bookkeeper off it on the grounds of neutrality. Boras was the one person in Beltran’s orbit nobody ever came for.