15th of Summer, 522
"Hurry up", Kane hissed, palming nervously at the sword at his hip. "This place makes me nervous."
It made Brisa nervous too. Her short, pointed ears constantly swivelled even as she kept her nose to the floorboards. Her breath was rising plumes of dust with every exhale. The house was a thin, rickety thing, two stories tall and leaning drunkenly against its neighbour. It was too narrow, with only one exit visible at a time and too many dark corners. It would be too easy for the two of them to be boxed in.
"Robert Loch, thirty-eight years old, male, human", Kane read aloud from the crumpled paper in his hand. "Last known location: two-story abode in the sunset quarter, upper east end, a block south of the Execution Square, between two derelicts. What the petch does that even mean. Petching Sunberth. What kind of city doesn't have petching addresses."
The floor was thick with dried mud. It was the same scent as the years of eroded dirt just outside the house, but Brisa thought she could recognize a salty tang in it, like there was a second, similar smell beneath it. There was another type of mud here, one mixed with seawater. Was it tracked all the way here from the port?
"Wanted for skipping last pay period", Kane went on, slipping into a Sunbirthian drawl he had unwittingly learned from her. "Sum total of loan, two-hundred gold miza. For, get this, 'extraneous purchases'." Kane looked up from the page to raise an amused eyebrow at Brisa, who swung one amber eye around to meet his gaze. When it was clear the Kelvic didn't get the joke, Kane scoffed. "Gods, you're dumber than a sack of hammers. It means this guy is a lush. He used it to buy whores, clothes and what passes for ale in this dump."
Brisa crossed the room, her nails clicking hollowly on the floorboards as she sniffed the space just inside the front door. Yes, the smell was stronger over here. How many times would the man have to be at the shoreside to grind enough mud into the floorboards to overwhelm the natural grime from the sunset quarter?
"But seriously, two hundred gold? That's pocket change for a guy like Goldfinger. Why is he sending us out for this? It won't even cover our wages."
Brisa wanted to tell him to look around himself and see what he could find. The guy they were looking for clearly hadn't been here for several days, telling from the state of the moldy wooden bowls on the counter. But she understood from the thrum of irritation stretching between their bond that Kane was working himself up to a state. If she derailed him now he would take it out on her, and then nothing would get done.
"It's not even a full two hundred gold. It's a missed payment from that loan. That must be, what, twenty gold? Fifty?" Kane crossed his arms over his chest, taking his hand off the pommel of his sword as he leaned against the counter.
[/indent]
