Lies Among Friends

"Elthien Talagar. It has been quite some time. I hope our latest expedition is still functioning as planned." 

Auriel frowned as Isai asked his question and glared into her eyes through her helmet. The 'last expedition' had not gone terribly well, with the operative she had paid Isai to have an identity forged for having disappeared about a month after he'd gotten his false identity and finished his training. Auriel still hadn't figured out what had happened to the man, but she feared the worst.

Before she was able to explain any of this, Jack pulled out some coin and interjected, "Greeting good sir. My bodyguard Elthien here has informed me that you would be the man to talk to about registering with. I am Ikan Keekbutay a merchant from Kurst and this fine woman is my wife Iarlas Mia Keekbutay a merchant noble of Nuna-Bihnys and we are looking to improve our trade routes with Radogast. However we lack the proper licenses and paperwork to do things properly so we have decided to register with you first in order to make our business error free."

Auriel nodded, hoping the gesture would let Isai know that she would answer his inquiry later, for she did owe him the truth in case that unfortunate incident put him at risk.

At that point, LeLu said, "A pleasure to meet you good sir. I trust you are the right man for this task."

And then Jack continued, "So as you can see we are unable to get our trade business up and running here till we can settle out our paperwork. Granted it's a tedious task that very few seem to value till times like this so is it possible you can make time in your busy schedule to help us out of a bind?"

With Barble humming a tune in the back, and Isai standing their looking at them critically, Auriel started to realize she had probably botched this encounter. Although she did want to give Jack experience with the secrecy needed survive in this business, Isai was already well aware of what Auriel did for a living, so he probably wouldn't appreciate Jack shoveling a bunch of lies at him.

Realizing that they had probably already done enough to insult Isai's intelligence, Auriel decided to take over the situation. "I forgot to tell them that you are already well aware of my profession," she explained. Knowing their actual names would probably mean nothing to Isai anyway and hoping to appear a little more trustworthy, Auriel said, "Jack, LeLu, Isai can be trusted. We don't have tell him about the identities we want just yet."

Turning back to Isai, she said, "So yeah, as Jack said, if you can help us out in the near future, that would be greatly appreciated."

Auriel glanced around Isai and saw Barble in the back. "Oh, dinner is on me by the way."