Silven Marrow was a man who trusted parchment more than people. Proof do not lie—it only revealed the hand that wrote it. Which was why the stranger unsettled him so.
That morning's council still rang in his ears. Elias had sat there with steady hands, answering questions as if the weight of judgment were nothing to him. Not trembling, not stumbling, not even begging. When he had said, "A sword cannot swing if the man behind it starves," it had landed sharper than Aldric's steel.
And the bastard wasn't wrong.
Silven scowled, standing at the window of his chambers, overlooking the keep's courtyard. The stranger's composure was the most dangerous part. Men lied, yes, but men under threat of death usually pissed themselves while doing it. Elias… Elias had looked the lord of the keep in the eye and spoken calm as a monk.
No peasant did that.
He turned back to the desk, where parchment was spread in messy stacks. Reports from riders, scribes, and spies. He had already ordered inquiries into neighboring towns, villages, even prisons. Nothing. No "Elias," no man in strange clothes, no foreigner who could pass for him.
Too clean. Too deliberate.
The door creaked open, and Kael slipped in, carrying a ledger Elias had written upon. "Advisor," Kael began, hesitating, "I thought you should see this again. The method… it works."
Silven grunted, waving him closer. Kael laid the parchment on the desk, the neat columns of Elias' handwriting standing in stark contrast to the scribes' usual chicken-scratch.
"Useful," Silven admitted, his voice like gravel. "But men do not pluck skills from the air."
Kael shifted, clearly uncomfortable. "Perhaps in his land, such order is common."
"Perhaps." Silven's tone said he believed none of it.
He leaned forward, tapping the page with one bony finger. "Look here. No hesitation in the hand. This is not a man improvising. This is training. Years of it." His gaze sharpened. "So tell me, Kael—what sort of peasant or soldier spends years at a clerk's table, then wanders into our land in rags?"
Kael opened his mouth, shut it, then sighed. "By the Flame, I don't know. But he saved me time today. I'll not curse his gift."
Silven's lips twisted into something close to a snarl. "Flame blind you, Kael, gifts are never free."
The steward winced at the curse but said nothing.
Silven turned away, pacing to the shelves that lined his walls. Scrolls of trade routes, prisoner ledgers, church tithes. Elias' face burned behind his eyes. Calm. Calculating. Clever.
If he had been born Orravian, Silven would have said the gods marked him for something. But men who fell from nowhere? Men who lied with ease, then stared down a lord unblinking? Those were the sort of men who burned keeps to the ground.
Silven closed his eyes, exhaling slowly. "I will find his roots, Kael. Even if I must dig the whole cursed world apart."