Kleber Porvis

Elven gold was found on him. His room was then searched, and from under the floorboards beneath his bed the soldiers brought a hidden letter and a mixed hoard of imperial and elven coins. Ephorus read the letter: signed "L.P.", it promised Kleber the baron's lands and property once the work was done. The plan was later told in full: Vermont was to be killed, his estates were to pass to Kleber, and the baron's daughter was to be married to another man. Kleber, close to the steward Helmut, had been the one carrying word out of the house. He was then bound tightly.⁸⁹¹⁰

When the camp was attacked during the escape, a man who tried to reach Kleber's tent to carry him off or kill him was stopped by Klobus and found dead with three magical burns on his back. Kleber survived.¹¹¹⁰

Questioned in a separate wagon as the convoy moved, he first claimed he had taken the money to learn about the enemy and had hidden it because he trusted no one, a plain lie. He then offered to bargain with Kemp: he had seen the rebels try to kill him, and knew where one of their camps lay and who some of their leaders were. He said that his cousin Adeline was with the rebels of her own will, and that the recent fight had been the first violence of the rebellion. He did not want to see his uncle.¹²¹³¹⁴

He said he had brought in the Bloody Coin himself, through go-betweens he had used before, believing the money would buy him their loyalty and his own safety; now they no longer obeyed him. He had never dealt with the elves in person, but had heard of material backing from them, and said that what had begun as hired soldiers had become an investment. He named a noble house as the true head of the rebellion, with elven support behind it.¹⁵¹⁶¹⁷

He denied any part in the attack on the village, saying it made no sense to plunder his own land, and asked in return for his information that until his trial he be treated before his uncle as if his treason were unknown. Kemp agreed to report his cooperation to the court. Kleber marked two large rebel muster camps on the map, both nearer to Riverguard than the convoy then was. His manacles were taken off; by day he went about under watch, and at night he slept among unarmed legionaries. The baron, kept in the dark, still took the arrest for a ruse.^18192021

He had never seen the rebels' military leader, Karga (Rainer Karga), but had heard that he was bald, in his forties, with a crow worked on his armour, and that his soldiers were fiercely loyal to him. He said his cousin had been angered by the rising taxes laid on her father and by the loss of Riverguard, and that she might be in either camp, though he did not know which. He also gave the names of some minor nobles.²²²³

During the siege of Sarpyar the baron and Kemp weighed him as a possible champion against Rainer, but the baron did not want a member of his family to die, and losing a prisoner who carried so much knowledge was also counted against it. He did not fight.²⁴²⁵

After the siege the company chose to send him on to the authorities around the crown prince. Kemp asked Colonel Joseph Wilhelm privately to take him under covert watch rather than as an open prisoner and hand him over to the proper office; the colonel agreed and asked for a report. Told that his terms and his information had been passed to Kemp's superiors, Kleber thanked them for the faith kept on both sides and made ready to ride with the cavalry. The outcome of his trial is not known.²⁶²⁷²⁸