The breastplate mercenary

His name was never written down, and nobody in Haudh-Gwenn had anything to call him but his armor. He was ex-military out of Peredhel, which showed in the breastplate, kept as a soldier keeps one, and in the bastard sword he carried one-handed the way only the trained can hold a Peren blade. He belonged to a hunters’ guild and was separately bound by service under In Ikhtar. Guild men sign contracts without being told what is in them, because getting burned on a bad job is how a man climbs the rungs, and reneging on one, as he put it, would not go well.

The contract was to abduct Councilor Khadija Dalzen, hold her a few weeks and return her unharmed. He could not say any of that, and believed he was magically prevented from saying it, because the witch he worked alongside had convinced him she had cursed him silent. She had done nothing of the kind.

He stopped the party in the street, told them he held a contract he could not describe, urged them to unbind the witch, and would not walk away from a dead employer’s job. When the ambush broke out around him he watched it, shook his head, and withdrew without ever drawing. Aldo found him afterward lying up inside Asiya Azrak’s riverside warehouse, waiting for Khadija to come back for a second cartload of medical supplies, and came through the picked lock with a crossbow already leveled at his face. He surrendered on terms: returned to Peredhel unharmed, and his name never attached to the attempt. Asiya kept him, saying she was not through with him yet, and nobody in the room objected, Khadija included.