“O-oh. Glad you see things my way,” Faint belatedly answered Cinder. Perhaps in different circumstances she would have caught the condescending undertone of the woman’s voice, but she was too busy trying to process the sheer temerity of Lak Lok, which had gone past the ravings of an unreasonable costumer into the territory of armed robbery. It seemed the Kobold was intent to uphold certain stereotypes about the species.

She was reminded of former acquaintances. Greedy, brutish, and full of that overconfident swagger born from getting away with too much with far too little resistance. In her experience, sometimes those people would learn humility, but often too late, and often at a cost to those they worked with. Occasionally, the people around them were not willing to live with the risk and took measures themselves.

[i]And he’s being sent out to look into the corpses. The ones we hoped to ask the authorities about. [/i]The mere thought of Lak Lok having anything to do with that made her feel queasy. [i]Maybe we could send him out to the wilds on his own, let him and whatever beasts are out there sort each other out.[/i] She found herself surprised by her own uncharitable thought and sighed, shaking her head.

“I was hoping to order some breakfast, but I’m not sure I can trust anything sent to this side of the room after that,” she commented wearily, working herself up to addressing the kobold. She was encouraged by the disapproving frowns she saw in the others’ expressions. “There’s a lot I want to say about what just happened, but I’ll stick to the practical. Lak Lok, it will be a problem for the rest of us if your first response to someone annoying you is threatening them at gunpoint… and your second is robbing them at knifepoint,” she added after a moment’s consideration. “A bit of discretion’s all I ask unless you’d rather work on your lonesome.”

Glancing up towards the door to the kitchen, Faint left a handful of coins at the counter and stood up. She had not bought anything for herself, but felt obligated to leave some manner of payment after the earlier display. Regardless of her issues with some of their ‘team,’ it seemed like everyone’s tasks had been sorted out for the moment, which meant there was work to be done. She faced Cinder and Soot, “I need to take care of some things. Does meeting up at Mr. Garrick’s estate an hour from now sound good to the two of you? For now, I suggest we split off before someone at the back decides to kick us out or involve the authorities.”