Syrina entered the office without knocking, ignoring the sign that said, PRIVATE. NO ENTRY.
* * *
The man behind the desk had a gaunt face and pudgy body. He lingered in that indeterminate age between thirty and fifty. What was left of his thin black hair was cropped short. He looked over his shoulder from where he fiddled with a row of dark wooden filing cabinets standing along the back wall, on either side of the door that led to Lees’s office. He wore loose, tailored, dark green trousers and a black satin vest, and he sported three large gems—red, black, and yellow—in rings on his right hand.
“This is a private business,” he said to the boy hovering in the doorway. “Didn’t you see the sign on the door? Are you lost?”
The lad appeared young, even among the N’naradin deckhands strande
