The Hunter's Guide to Monsters

Sucar walked Krow to where he lived – a set of rooms in one of the residential towers. It was a ten-minute walk, the entire route along skywalks. Their path never dipped below any tower's second level.

Krow leaned over the railing to eye the space between the skyways and the ground – full of lower walkways and people passing by.

"Did you search below?"

Sucar looked surprised. "No, should I have?"

So the guy just went back and forth along the skyways, without actually looking seriously?

"You said you dropped it. Is the key sentient, that it would choose where it lands?" Maybe his tone was a little testy, but the vertical space under even a ten-minute walk on elevated walkways was a lot of ground to cover. And he had a feeling Sucar was going to be little help there.

Krow exhaled a breath. "Nevermind. Let's walk back. Tell me everything."

"I just…walked."

"You met no-one, talked to no-one. Is that what you're saying?"

"Sucar?" a voice called from behind and above. "Brother, aren't you supposed to be at work?"

A draculkar woman older than Sucar by at least a few decades leaned out a window as they looked up.

"Sister! I, uh –"

"I am a client," Krow interrupted the incoming ramble, throwing an arm around Sucar's shoulders. "Sucar is showing me around. He didn't say he had a sister as fair as moonlight on the lake."

The woman laughed, responded good-naturedly. "If only all the clients of the Realty were as charming as you, perhaps I might ask him to introduce more of them."

Sucar made an inarticulate sound of protest.

His sister leaned her chin on a hand, smirked. "But it is a disappointment, you look too young for me and  my husband. Were you just a decade older…"

She sighed dramatically.

Sucar made to say something, but Krow tightened his hold and he could only make a sound like that of a dying cow. Somehow, it managed to convey all his horror and disbelief just the same.

"Fate is truly cruel," agreed Krow, pressing his free hand to his chest. "Sucar is a lucky brother, to be able to talk to such a sister every morning."

"If he didn't, I'd storm the Realty to see why," the sister shook her head. "He needs so much looking after."

"Sister!"

She laughed. "I should not keep you from business. Being so diligent so early in the morning, it must be important."

"Fare magnificently, lady. I regret we cannot stay longer." Krow dragged Sucar away. When they were sufficiently out of hearing, he sighed. "You just walked, you said?"

Sucar crossed his arms, but the tips of his ears darkened. "You flirted! With…with my sister!"

"She flirted back," Krow pointed out. "And if her husband had been present, he'd be flirting too, it seemed. In any case, she was distracted and you didn't spill that you lost the key to your workplace. Or was I wrong, in that you wanted to keep that to yourself?"

Sucar looked away, mumbled. "They already think I'm unreliable."

Krow wanted to say something, but it wasn't his place to comment on family relations. So he pretended not to hear and instead kept the topic to the problem at hand. "Any more detours I should know?"

"No?"

"Oh?"

"I talk to my sister all the time! Why would it be significant?"

The walk back, tracing their steps, didn't take just ten minutes, as Krow took it upon himself to wring every insignificant detail of Sucar's walk from home out of the younger draculkar's absentminded head.

They entered a bustling viaduct, wider than most such that stalls and small shops divided the space into smaller paths popular with pedestrians.

"How about here? What do you do, usually? Which shops do you go to? Those ones?"

"I don't buy from those shops."

"No? The air rich with the scent of cooking, you didn't feel a craving from just walking by? Didn't buy something to nibble on?" And now Krow was making himself hungry with these questions.

"Oh…" Sucar looked embarrassed. "But I get my sausage rolls from that stall over there, not these shops!"

"You must have paid," Krow nodded patiently. "The key could've fallen out when you reached for your coins."

"No, I have a coin pouch. The key hangs from my belt, but I still had it after I ate the rolls."

"Right." Krow still marked the place in his head, like he did with the sister's building. "Onward, then."

"Alright. Since we're here, that's where I bought my favorite grilled skewers. Oh, the next one, beside the one with the fish sign, they only opened this morning so I sampled their roasted cattail lizard. It was excellent! And that's…"

He went on and on. Ten stalls, twelve…

"…great! I think the fire-pollen added great flavor to the meat. That's the last one." He turned to Krow in triumph.

"Are you sure," Krow asked flatly, his mental map full of food stalls and shops. "The very last in this market."

There was still a bit of market area left, after all. Surely that stomach couldn't have been satisfied after only seventeen stalls.

"Of course, I'm sure!"

"Hm."

"Sucar! Are you alright? After what happened earlier, you ran away so fast I didn't get the chance to ask."

Seriously, how many detours were possible in a ten-minute walk?

Sucar blushed gloriously at the sound of the voice, then paled rapidly the next moment.

Krow watched in interest as the other changed colors in a way he didn't think draculkar would be able to do, with their twilight-shaded skin.

"Ye-yes! I'm fine! See you…"

Krow grabbed him before he could run away, gave his best smile to the young female draculkar looking at them uncertainly.

"Something happened earlier?" He tightened his grip as Sucar made greater efforts to get free.

"Oh. Yes. Are you friends?" She glanced between him and the struggling Sucar, eyes narrowing in concern and faint suspicion.

Krow put Sucar in a headlock when the younger started to frantically shake his head. "Distantly related. I came to look in only. This one takes so much looking after, doesn't he?"

He injected the question with the same playful exasperation the sister earlier professed.

Sucar made an offended sound, muffled by Krow's arm.

The girl nodded, giggling, suspicions eased. "He and Dhurvo are always fighting. That's why I was worried. Dhurvo had his friends with him when he met Sucar this morning, and I didn't see Bavaggai with Sucar."

Sucar went limp under Krow's grip.

He let the boy go.

"If this Dhurvo needs friends to fight a single person, he's not a very good fighter, is he?" Krow commented.

"Or a good person," the girl huffed, eyes lit with indignation.

Sucar lifted his head at that, surprise taking over the mortification.

Krow ignored him. "Where did this fight happen?"

"Oh, just there." She pointed to the edge of the market street. "My mother keeps a shop right around the corner, so I saw. Dhurvo and the others scattered when I called one of the Guard over. He didn't have much time to do anything."

"I see." Krow stared intently at the most likely place for Sucar to have lost the key.

"You…you're not going to go after Dhurvo, are you? I'll have to report premeditated violence if he turns up beaten badly."

"Would I do that?" Krow asked rhetorically. "Sucar is strong enough to fight his own battles. In any case, young miss, I am happy he has friends who worry about him. With a friend like you in the Guard, I won't have to worry so much."

The girl blushed. "You think I'm strong enough to be a Guard? I…I haven't told many yet. Sucar, did you tell him? I didn't think you knew…"

"Friends know things about their friends, don't they?" Krow shrugged. "The Guard will be privileged to have a heart as lovely and strong as yours in their ranks."

She smiled prettily, cheeks darkening further. "Thank you!"

"Have to go," Sucar coughed out. "Work."

Now it was him who grabbed Krow and dragged him away.

Krow waved at the confused girl, shrugging helplessly.

"You," Sucar said when he finally stopped. "You stay away from her!"

"I don't even know her name."

"It's Emarkke – no! Forget I said that. Forget you ever met her!"

Krow laughed. "Don't worry. I'm not looking for romance."

"Good."

"But you, oho, fighting a bunch of guys over a girl? I didn't think you had that sort of fire in you."

"I don't!" Sucar looked even more mortified after that outburst. "I can't fight, or talk to girls, or do anything as well as Dhurvo can! I thought she liked him!"

He deflated. "How did you even know she wanted to join the Guard?"

"She has the Guard emblem on her belt."

Sucar nodded. "Her older brother's. He died five or four years ago because of bandits."

"You think she'd carry that symbol around without wanting to carry on his legacy?"

Sucar's shoulder's slumped. "So I'm just stupid."

There was a long silence.

Sucar smiled at him, a trifle bitter but also unsurprised. "You were supposed to refute."

Krow grunted, unsympathetic. "At your age, I was stupid too."

"You're barely a year older than I am." Sucar was disbelieving.

"A year is ten years to some." Krow shrugged blithely.

"What does that mean?" Sucar was baffled. "A year is a year to everyone!"

"Let's just find your key, hm?" Krow took a few steps back toward the market, then stopped. "Or, you know, why don't you have some lunch in that nice cafe and wait for me."

"It's midmorning."

"A snack then. See you later!"