Okay, so people talk all the time about close third point of view. Hell, I'm always going on about it to my students, urging them to drop filtering phrases like "she thought" and "he watched." The thing is, there's more to it than just language mechanics. You can include all the sensory details and immediate verbs you want and still not be entirely immersed in the pov character. 

There's an extra element, and it's not something you can get at through skill. It's the the reason what we do is in fact an art, also. It's what some people call character voice, and you achieve it not by writing in the correct way, but by understanding your character so well and empathizing with him so completely that you're not only experiencing what she's experiencing but you're also thinking like he does, making her word choices, taking on his inner as well as outer voice.

When it happens, it's magic. 

It happened for me the night before last with a character who has been very reluctant to let himself be known. So, without further ado, may I present to you, Fix Finder, the other protagonist of my sequel to Amaranth and Ash:

Fix shut the door behind Evanscar. Around him the townhouse echoed with silence. It's empty rooms, appointed in cream and gold with warm maple wood fixtures, were impeccably clean. The breakfast dishes were done and the refridgerator stocked. Evanscar would not return from his appointment until late afternoon. Fix's time was his own.

He added a little water to the vase of Gerber daisies in the shrine tucked away in the alcove near the door, then went into his room and took off his uniform. From the bottom drawer of his dresser he took out an an old pair of pants and a shirt from his days as Ei Harken's boot boy. The fabric was soft from age and use, the garments ragged at the cuffs and smeared with bootblack. They fit him poorly these days, pulling across his chest and thighs, and though clean, they had a faint, acrid smell, as if the terror he had endured at Harken Manor imbued their very fibers. But he wore them for these expeditions anyway, both for the camoflage of their shabbiness and as a reminder of how far he'd come and how much he had to lose.

On his way out he collected a bag of trash from the kitchen — might as well save himself the extra trip. He carried it out the back door, across their tiny, orderly garden and out the gate, into the wild, overgrown path down to the grotto. The canopy of birch and cherry leaves above cast dappled shadows on the dirt where only his feet ever trod. Bright patches of spring sunshine illuminated the footprints he'd left behind on other days. Small feet, but solid and square, just like a pel's feet should be. 

And what a proper pel he was, to be sure.

The path opened up into a little stone grotto beside the rushing waters of the Newhope. The bright, fresh smell of the water kept it tolerable, despite the two bags of trash already awaiting the chel gleaner. Framed by lilac and tree of heaven, it was a private little spot, and if he sat on the opposite side of the shallow depression where the bank dropped away to the water, he really couldn't smell the garbage at all. 

An upturned oyster bucket sat in the shade of a lilac bush on that side. On top of it sat a rock. Good. His buyer had been by this morning. He lifted the bucket. The crate full of watered down silsinthe he'd left there last night was gone and in its place another crate, full of empties and beneath that, a tidy stack of elat. He put the pail back down, sat on it and counted his money in the warm spring sunshine. 200 elat. A very satisfactory sum.

What would old Harken think if he saw Fix now? 

And what about Evanscar?

But his new master must never know of this. For all the audacity of his ambition, Evanscar was, like most vasai, quite provincial in his outlook on lawbreakers. 

It wasn't their fault. Vasai underwent a great deal of indoctrination in the temple, and after that, their lives were circumscribed by their duties to the Elai. Evanscar's adventures were strictly limited to infighting among his peers and sexual acts. He went to client's homes, or to the Shelter. For leisure he entertained friends, or attended gatherings at their homes, or went to the Grassland. He shopped the boutiques of Harken Avenue where he bought pretty things for  no reason. He never ventured into places where people like Fix conducted their clandestine business. He was as innocent of the criminal world as a fish is of flying.

Fix stood and picked up the crate of empties. He made his way along the footpath beside the Newhope until he was out of the immediate vincinity of Evanscar's townhouse. Then he took the alley behind Harken Avenue and stopped at the back door to the Grassland Saloon. He knocked twice, paused and then knocked again. After a few minutes the door opened and Pour, a pel bartender of the establishment and Fix's contact, stood there, the bags under his eyes seeming to flow right into his jowls like a waterfall in slow motion. Like a lot of pel, Pour was just too damn tired to have any brains at all.

"Well, pe, what have you for me today?" asked Fix.

"Six liters, but it's going to cost you this time." 

No. This sack of flour was not getting it over on him. "Six liters and three of 'em are your piss. You'll take the going rate, half an elat a liter, just like everyone else."

Pour's eyes were as dull and hard as a rock, and as easily moved. "I don't think so, pe. I'm your best supplier. These ain't just dregs half drowned in backwash. these are half bottles of the finest -- Brimstoke Gold Label. I want three quarters of an elat a liter -- four and a half."

Great. Who'd given this idiot ideas? "Yeah, and I want a vasai mermaid to blow me. That's as much a chance as you've got selling that stuff for four and a half elat. Come on pe." Fix held out three elat in the palm of his hand. "Let's have 'em."

Pour struck Fix's hand. The coins rang against the tile floor of the kitchen. The rest of the staff stopped working to watch. Pour puffed himself up for them. "That's what I think of your three elat, Fix. Wipe offered me five for the stuff, and three quarters of an elat for every liter I sell him after that. You're not the only game in town anymore. You've got to be more competitive."

 The ass. Now Fix was going to have to make an example of Pour and the last thing he wanted was to go home with a scraped hand again. Evanscar already thought he was constitutinally incapable of using a cheese grater. When the fuck where the Elai lords going to reintroduce the fashion of gloved service? 

He grabbed Pour by the back of the neck and pulled him down hard, smashing the bridge of Pour's nose with his forehead.  The snap was almost drowned out by Pour's scream. Fix realeased him and stepped back. 

Pour bent double, crying and cupping his nose in his hands, blood oozed out from beneath them. 

Fix grabbed him by the hair and threw him into a table filled with goblets and snifters. Pour staggered, trying to stop his fall but he crashed into it anyway, going down amid a shower of broken glass. As the shatters faded his moaning took their place.

Fix gathered up the bottles of silsinthe and left.