[Kel sighs through her nose, calling up her internal image of a mountain lake with nary a ripple on it.]

I'm not a mercenary, nor an assassin. I don't kill 'for a living'. I've done disaster relief, and trained refugees to fight when the army didn't deign to give us enough soldiers to protect us from an invading force. I've chased bandits, and brought supplies to a village about to slide into the sea after an earthquake.

There's plenty of ways to protect the realm. Sometimes it involves killing a person so they stop killing people who can't fight.

[She glances at him once, her eyes hard]

I help people. It's what I've always wanted to do.