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davidgillonThese things are both true, he kills someone within the first half-dozen pages, and he does tell us the truth about it.
He just doesn't always (ever) tell us the full truth.
Saevus Corax runs a company engaged in battlefield salvage, which in his world (the same one as in Parker's 16 Ways to Defend a Walled City and related books) means taking out a contract with the two sides in a war, giving you the responsibility for dealing with the dead, and the rights to whatever you can find on them.
So post-battle Corax, his half-dozen department heads cum friends and his 500 men arrive at the battlefield and start collecting the salvage - weapons, armour, clothes, shoes, and personal valuables (and in certain cases valuables that were persons), and finally collecting and burning the bodies, which is the worst job and one Corax keeps for himself. Obviously they prefer a fresh battlefield.
It's not a job for people who want to be well liked or to have a settled home-life.
Corax and his people do have a base, somewhere to rest and refit between wars, and it's when they get home that the problems start.
Someone is setting Corax up, and they're doing a good job of it. Before we're a quarter of the way through the book, Corax is wanted by essentially the entire civilized world. And when the whole world is trying to turn you in for the reward(s), you need to think fast, have no qualms about the things you need to do, and have contacts everywhere.
So it's just as well he's Saevus Corax, not someone else.
Thoroughly recommended.
Just remember, he never tells you the entire truth. Even at the end.
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