Torris Corozad is perhaps the most talented weapons expert and swordsmith that her country has ever seen. She is also the leader of a band of runaways and vagabonds that hides out in an abandoned monastery on the border between two rival countries.
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T H E B O Y W H O C A M E to him at the door could not have been much more than sixteen, and he was too small to be considered a man, even if he was one, legally. He emerged from the stand of scraggly brush to the west side of the door that Kellen had ridden up to and knocked loudly on, his frame slight and waifish, his shockingly pale skin sticking out against the greenery surrounding the dilapidated cobblestone façade of the religious complex he had arrived at.
He appeared suddenly, no later than the last knock had echoed through the air, and floated over to Kellen like a ghost, his sickly-looking bare feet soundlessly skimming over the sawgrass.
"What brings you here, stranger?" The boy spoke with a heavy, lilting accent, his voice sounding much too high and reedy to be emitting the tough grunts and mumbles of the Ebellian tongue.
"I'm looking for her." Kellen chose his words carefully, keenly aware that he would need to begin making a good impression now, as the boy's mistress's opinion of him would likely determine the success of his future mission, as well as his plot to seize power in Duinthraul. Adder had warned him that she was quite temperamental, and that it was essential that he anger her as little as possible, which worried him. Not angering people had never been a strong point of his.
"For whom?" The boy was being purposefully dense, but he tread lightly over to Kellen nonetheless, until he paused, motionless, a mere pace in front of him. Kellen's horse whinnied frightfully, and he reached out to pat its nose in an effort to calm it. Ardagh clearly felt as uneasily about this boy as his master did.
"The Weaponsmith," he replied in a guarded tone. Adder had also informed him, when he had first told her of this woman back in Duinthraul, that she went by many names. He suspected that, by choosing which one to invoke her by, he had told this boy something of his intentions for meeting with her. He detested having to give up more information than was necessary to gain an audience with her.
He added her clear air of pretension to the fast-growing list of things he didn't like about this mystery assassin.
The pale boy nodded. "She's in a rare good mood today. I can likely arrange a meeting," he said. "However," he paused, with a glance at the longsword at his back and the curved knife hilted in his belt, "You will have to leave those outside."
I could just as easily slit your throat with them and force my way into your holy little keep, boy, Kellen thought, his old affinity for violence coming into sharp and immediate focus. He mentally brushed this quick flash of anger away.
He merely nodded and began to unsheathe his weapons. The boy looked at him expectantly after Kellen had handed him both the sword and the knife, and he begrudgingly reached toward his boot to give up the blade that was also stashed there. Though he was reluctant to part with his favorite weapons, he supposed it was a good indicator that the boy was at least competent at his job. He wasn't sure he wanted to be in the company of this woman when trouble struck, if she did not even take her own security seriously.
