Keleth was a Dzurlord who, having gambled excessively, happened to owe four thousand gold Imperials to Vlad Taltos (and apparently was much deeper in debt to other people than just that), and was a month late with his payment. Vlad managed to carefully extract some information about Mellar from him, learning that Mellar's real name was Leareth, and that Mellar had fought his way into House Dzur twelve years earlier, only to leave House Dzur two years later — something that Keleth, and all of House Dzur, found intensely humiliating.