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I'll try to do better if you let me live through this.
I strode up behind Kerina and offered the flustered man a nod.
The other man sidled away as if to run. At his hip he wore a knife, the sheath of which was worn enough to suggest he knew how to use it.
"Is there a problem here?" I asked, as though attempting to rescue the fishmonger from being accosted by the angry redhead. Perhaps I was. Kerina was pretty feisty.
"I…was just standing here and she—" He raised a thick finger and pointed at Kerina.
"He was staring at me," Kerina said. She sniffed.
The fishmonger spluttered. "I swear on my mother's life, I was not!"
The watcher stepped beside a truck which stopped on the street beside the dock.
"You were and you know it!" Kerina insisted. She pulled a knife from her hip and, before the sun could glint off the blade, she threw it. It struck the truck beside the watcher's head, missing his nose by a hair. The watcher froze.
"Sorry," Kerina said sweetly, "I meanthim."
The fishmonger shook his head and made a hasty retreat behind his boxes, eyes wide, muttering something about crazy women.
The watcher raised his hands. "Please don't kill me. I needed the money. My family…"
He wore worn clothes and, now I could see properly, bare feet. He had the hungry look of the homeless people I saw in the human world.
Dex would be pissed. He liked to think his people were well taken care of. If not by him, then by the temples. Doubtless leaders all over the globe preferred to make the same assumption. Or pretend to care if anyone was looking, but do nothing.
It wasn't up to me to tell the Keeper how to do his job, Dex had advisors for that. Or Kerina, if she was feeling especially feisty. But this—this was something I would have to tell him myself.
Kerina's hips swung until she was almost nose to nose with the man. She leaned against the truck with one hand, and yanked the knife out with the other.
"What's your name?" she asked.
The man's eyes, more white than iris, glanced toward me. I nodded.
"Answer her questions," I said, my tone perfectly even.
"Mason," the man replied, a quaver in his voice. "Aden Mason."
"All right then, Aden." Kerina straightened away from him. "Who paid you?"
He averted his eyes. "A man."
"Well that narrows it down," Kerina said with a snort. "What kind of man? Short, tall, pale skin, dark skin?"
"Neither short nor tall," Aden replied. "Medium skin. Like him." He nodded toward me. "A bit darker, perhaps. Brown eyes. Dressed all in black."
Kerina turned a perplexed expression toward me.
I nodded. Another person dressed in black. It may mean something, it may not, but I sensed Aden told the truth.
"How much did he pay you?" I asked.
Aden swallowed. "Five hundred dollars and the scale of a sand dragon."
I did a double take. "Sand dragon scale?"
Aden nodded fervently. "Yes, sir. A whole one."
