Editing Leaf Shakes the Wind (section)

== The Sapling Grows ==

Our work came more naturally to Leaf than to any other mortal student I’ve ever had. The fourth child of a farming family in Incas Prefecture, he was nominally in Noble to earn money selling the fruits of their labor, but the boy had already found a far easier way to earn the jade his parents and sisters needed.  The network of neglected children and urchins he'd created was astonishing; for nothing more than a few vegetables and some bread, they acted as lookouts and distractions for him while he made his profits directly from the pockets other merchants and patrons in the market.  He came to my attention when he lifted the purse and and two message scrolls from Liergess; it took us four days to track him down the first time, and another two after that before we actually caught him.  I hardly cared that the scrolls were still sealed, the money mostly unspent; the boy’s talents were far more valuable.

The reluctance of his family to let him go was short-lived in the face of the monthly stipend the boy earned as my apprentice scribe.  He learned his duties, both seen and unseen, quickly, earning his place within a year as one of the Empress' hidden hands. At first, his youth acted as his greatest cover, but as he aged his talents for deception and disguise allowed him to assume virtually any roll he needed.  While he never took much to the combat training we tried to give him, he was particularly talented with poisons, and a simple needle could be as deadly in his hands a sword in those of a soldier.  Equally prodigious was his ability to gather information; he seemed to take in even the smallest details of a scene with only a glance, and even I sometimes found myself lured into telling more than I had intended when we spoke.

I've been told he was killed while returning from his last assignment, but I have my doubts that he would be taken so easily.  Faking one’s death is, after all, one of the earliest lessons we teach.  However, the report that was found with the body satisfies my overseers, and they say we have too few agents to investigate further at this time.  I don’t press the matter because I know Leaf;  he was the most loyal agent I had, and if he has chosen not to return, he has good reason.

-- ''[[Iselsi Augus]], Agent of the All-Seeing Eye''