Hemlock

Distinctive markings catch the eye first: two small points sit beneath each of Hemlock's sharp amber eyes, with another pair under his lower lip, either moles or barbell piercings. His ash blond hair hangs long and immaculately kept, cut into a straight fringe across the brow, atop a tall, pale, imposing figure.

He dresses to match the chill he projects, wearing a long black coat trimmed with cream piping and buttons over a black suit and tie, a dark pink shirt in a subtle grid pattern, and light-colored gloves. The cane he carries, topped with a curved handle, secretly sheathes his sword, letting him walk armed while looking entirely refined.

Hemlock's creed permits an assassin nothing: no happiness, no attachments, not even a cover identity worth caring about. He regards Garden's operatives as tools of the Shopkeeper and himself as the purest among them, honed through deliberate solitude. That devotion never taught him how to talk to people, so ordinary friendliness leaves him stiff, defensive, or visibly rattled, a weakness his coworker Millie Myers's relentless flirting at city hall exposes constantly.

In combat he turns savage, seeking direct confrontation and relishing the total elimination of his targets even when restraint would serve the plan better. The same intensity fuels his hostility toward Yor. Her marriage and civilian job read to him as betrayals of everything an assassin should be, and her influence on Gympie, who began musing about boyfriends, hardened the grudge until he attempted to kill Yor outright and threatened her family to force her hand.

Defeat gutted him. If solitude could not make him stronger than a woman who embraces her bonds, his sacrifices lose their meaning, and although he vows to isolate himself even harder, doubt now trails him everywhere. Beneath the cruelty and pride he is simply lonely. After Matthew relays the Shopkeeper's approval of Yor's appearance on live television, Hemlock concludes that cavorting with civilians must somehow be a patriotic skill and abruptly accepts one of Millie's dinner invitations, to her total confusion.

Hemlock fights at a pace few can follow. He bounds through forest canopy alongside Garden's best with precise balance, matched Yor's rapid assault blow for blow, dodged strikes from blind angles, and threw a knife accurately while falling after taking a direct hit to the forehead, kicking aside her counterthrow as he recovered. His strength is considerable; he once snapped a thick branch off a tree one-handed and hurled it to chase an elk clear of a snare, and neither injury nor disorientation blunts his lethality for long.

Blades are his specialty. The cane-sheathed sword takes heads in a single pass and shears through heavy wood, his throwing knives can nearly clip a ladybug resting on a fingertip, and by hooking the sword's curved grip onto the cane sheath he extends the weapon into a flexible, whip-like reach tool under precise control.

His senses run equally sharp, picking out footprints, concealed traps, and the distant presence of Yor's coworkers watching from across a river. His stealth held even against Loid Forger's trained awareness while shadowing the couple for an extended stretch; Yor only registered him because he deliberately let his malice show.