A Breton born in Quimper in 1764, Armand de Kermorvan stands 1.93m tall at a time when the average soldier measures 1.65m. His slate-grey gaze is cold and assessing. He enters a room and takes inventory before speaking: exits, faces, hands, what is in its place and what is not. Men he watches too long tend to look away.

Neither soldier nor policeman, he operates where the law no longer suffices. He speaks when he has something to say, acts before he explains, and records everything in a black leather notebook — observations, suspects, the names of every dead man since his first campaign. His code of justice is not always legal. It is always his own.

An Alsatian born in Strasbourg in 1763, son of a Strasbourg merchant, Anton Schwarz grew up between two languages and two ways of seeing the world. A senior clerk in a cloth-trading firm, he learned to read four languages, keep registers and find information in places nobody else would think to look. Those same logical systems allow him to crack codes.

Saliceti introduces him to Kermorvan without ceremony: "He talks little. Consider that a quality." Schwarz confirms the quality immediately. A simple "Citizen lieutenant" to Kermorvan. That was all. His weapons are not explosives or sabres. They are patience, observation, psychology and information. He lays his documents on the table in a precise order, always the most important last. He never says "I think". He says "the information indicates" or "the cross-reference suggests".

No agenda, no visible personal ambition, no expressed political convictions. He assesses, decides, acts. In Kermorvan's shadow, he is its silent mind.