Chapter 1
It was snowing.
I couldn’t help staring at the fluffy white flakes as they lazily drifted past my window. This was a surprise. Yeah, sure, it was the first day of Ursian so technically it was winter now, but it hardly ever snowed in Kiiren at all, let alone this early in the year. I like the cold and the snow, don’t get me wrong, but it was just…a little bit of a shock to see it, to be honest. In hindsight, that should have been the first sign that it was going to be a very, very weird day.
Fortunately it was a short indoor (heated!) walk to get my mail, and equally fortunately the weather never stops the postal service. I made the trek downstairs in my brightly colored pajamas, thick wool socks shielding me from the cold tiled floors of the mailroom, a steaming cup of coffee in hand. Most of the mail was what I had expected — the Ursian 1 edition of the Times, a few different fliers from local shops, a coupon book — the usual. There was one little letter that stood out big time, though. It was hand-addressed, for starters. The ink used was likely gold, which had me raising an eyebrow nearly as much as the return address did. Or, rather, the name on the return address: Don Kariya.
Don fucking Kariya sent me a letter? No way. This had to be from a secretary or something. I hadn’t done any work for him in at least six months. On the very, very rare occasions where he wanted me, specifically, for a project he sent one of his lackeys to come knocking on my door. He didn’t send letters.
Needless to say I made my way back up to my apartment with quite a bit more haste than I’d had going down to the mailroom. My grumpy, elderly neighbor was in the hallway. He took in my pajamas and messy hair with a hint of disgust. He didn’t say anything this time, though, so I just gave him a polite nod and breezed past him back inside. I dumped the rest of the mail on my kitchen table and all but tore open the letter. There was a turquoise blue wax seal and everything, bearing Kariya’s trademark sigil of a turtle shell.
I didn’t exactly know what Kariya’s handwriting looked like, but the letter inside was certainly handwritten. Dictated or penned by Kariya himself, it almost didn’t matter. This was personally addressed to me, which was nearly as surprising as the contents of the letter. The envelope had been made of black paper, which had made the gold ink stand out. The letter inside was blue ink on some of the most lavish, smooth paper I’d ever held. He certainly spared no expense in the stationary department.
Miss Spikora Mori,
You are cordially invited to attend the winter Itagaria, held in the afternoon of Ursian 1, which will be the day you receive this letter. I am specifically inviting you due to your bid history. The final lot of the evening is something you are certainly going to be interested in. Bring as much bullion as you can spare. The auction will be at the usual auction house. The doors open at 5 in the evening.
Regards,
Don Kariya
It was short, it was to-the-point, and it was very interesting. “Based on my bid history,” eh? In my ten years living in Kiiren City I could count the number of Itagaria auctions I’d missed on one hand, even including the special, extra auctions. The contents of the auctions were usually so varied that I ended up finding something interesting to bid on at most of them. Don Kariya knew what my goal was, so it had to be something to do with that. Some sort of magical item? An Artifact? If he was personally inviting me it almost certainly had something to do with breaking curses. I was near giddy with excitement when I got to the end of the letter. It was still early in the day. Kalain, the central district of Kiiren City, wasn’t that far away either, so I had plenty of time but… well, I hadn’t had any plans for the day anyway. I basically bounced into my bedroom and started rooting around in my closet for the perfect outfit. I didn’t want to stand out, but I didn’t want to look like just any random person either. It needed to be warm and easy to move around in, too.
Today I decided to go with blues - dark blue cotton pants, knitted blue leg warmers, blue leather boots with a warm wool lining, a long sleeved tunic the color of the sky, and a leather belt that matched the boots, with a half dozen little pouches of various shades of blue. I grabbed a knitted scarf the color of a robin’s egg, wrapping it around my neck and lower face tightly, tugging on a pair of gloves that had been knitted from the same yarn. I shoved all of my hair under a blue felted wool hat, and though purple bangs still framed my face in the front I was confident they wouldn't attract any undue attention to me. Finally, I added a dark blue heavy cloak with a mantle. I had won this beauty at an Itagaria auction a few years ago - not only was it the work of a master craftsman, it was also enchanted. Embroidered in lighter blue threads around the entire outside of the cloak and mantle were complicated swirls and runes, which must have taken the tailor weeks to finish. These made the cloak effectively waterproof and kept the wearer nice and warm. It was the perfect winter cloak, and was actually the reason I owned a lot of blue clothes. Blue wasn't an expensive color to dye things, but it also wasn't exactly cheap. Nobody would suspect that I was actually fairly well-off in the money department, and nobody could accuse me of not having any style either. I’d attract attention, but not the wrong kind of attention.
Taking Kariya’s advice I grabbed some bullion, but not all of it. Only a fool would walk around with all of their money. Yes, both the local police and the Curadon would be everywhere in the auction house and in the surrounding district so it was going to be relatively safe, but…you really can never be too safe. Especially in Kiiren City. It’s a great city and I do love living here, but it is affectionately called “Crime City” for a reason…and not just because it is quite literally governed by the mafia.
Money in hand and dressed for the weather I set out into the chilly morning air. My cozy little apartment was outside of Kiiren proper in the Marsa district, so my trip to the auction house was actually a bit of a journey. I could have easily taken a train or carriage into the city, but it had turned into a nice morning for a walk. Kiiren looked beautiful buried under a blanket of soft, fluffy snow. The roads and sidewalks were enchanted to repel water, but the buildings and lawns and gardens were covered in snow. Tiny, crude little snow sculptures popped up every once in a while, the work of kids no doubt. There were also merchants every few blocks on the main roads selling warm drinks and foods out of little wooden carts or popup tents. I bought a cup of nice smelling tea and a roasted sweet potato on a stick from one of them and went on my merry way. When I got to the Calain district, the center of Kiiren City, I still had a couple of hours to kill before the auction. So, I drifted through shops and the outdoor market before making my way to the huge white stone building.
As to be expected, there were a bunch of fairly uninteresting items in the public auction house as there always were. The real treasure would be at the Itagaria, of course. It was, as always, going to be held in the underground section of the auction house. I was sure the Curadon had a loading dock and emergency exits somewhere, but I’d never found them. For bidders there was only one way in, and it was down a flight of stairs that was being guarded by, as always, one of the Curadon Enforcers. Ten years ago I’d been intimidated by the sharply dressed mountain of a man that stood guard in front of the plain, ordinary-looking door. Now I approached him with a bright smile on my face. I was fairly certain this guy had been on this particular assignment for at least the last few Itagaria auctions. It was hard to tell past the black-tinted glasses he wore, but he looked the same.
“Hello!” I chirped. I reached into a pocket and withdrew the letter from earlier, handing it over to him. He examined it carefully — I think, anyway. Again, hard to tell with the glasses. I could feel a slight pulse of mana as he inspected it. Eventually he nodded and handed it back over to me. He stepped sideways, pulling the door behind him open and gesturing for me to descend. “Thanks, big guy,” I said as I walked past him and descended the stone staircase.
There were multicolored lights embedded into the slate brick walls lighting my path down. At the bottom of the stairs I was met not with a tall, dark and dangerous Curadon enforcer but a cute lady sitting behind an enormous desk made of polished, dark wood. She had curly blonde hair and was wearing a rich purple velvet dress, golden jewelry, and immaculate makeup that matched both the dress and jewelry perfectly. Purple velvet, gold, expensive makeup… the Curadon never failed to impress. She looked up from a book she had been reading, placing a bit of ribbon in the book to mark her place before picking up a pen and turning her attention to a different, much bigger book that lay open in front of her.
“Name?” she asked.
“Mori,” I answered. She nodded in recognition.
“Miss Spikora Mori?” she asked.
“That’s me,” I replied. She nodded, running a gloved finger over a page of the book, down a column of what were probably names, eventually making a mark. She put down the pen and raised her gloved hands to either side of her, palms up.
“Welcome to the Winter Itagaria, Miss Mori,” she said. “To the right and left you’ll find rooms containing write-in bid items. These will be rotated out throughout the evening until the final auction begins.” She gestured to the door behind her. “The final auction will take place in the auditorium behind me. The doors will open promptly at half past seven, should you wish to get a front-row seat. I trust you need no explanations?” I shook my head. “Excellent. Refreshments are available in each of the write-in bid rooms. Good luck!”
I knew there was no way I was getting even a hint about what the final auction was, at least not out of her, so I made my way over to the room on the right. Entering the room I was immediately greeted by another girl dressed similarly to the one I’d just been talking to at the entrance. Her hair was dark and cut short, and she was probably a bit taller than the first girl had been.
“Welcome!” she said, offering me a folded piece of paper. In her other hand, expertly balanced, was a platter full of an assortment of pastries. I noted three other girls in similar outfits around the room, each also holding folded papers and carrying platters. I took the paper with a polite nod. “That’s our itinerary for the evening. Care for a pastry?” I nodded, unfolding the paper and then eagerly taking a pink sweet roll off of the platter.
“Thank you,” I said. I made my way past her, taking a bite of the roll. The roll was crispy on the outside, but the inside was a gooey dartberry jam. Despite them being out of season it was the perfect blend of tart and sweet. The Curadon never failed to impress. I barely stopped myself from shoving the rest of the roll into my mouth, electing to take smaller bites while I read over the itinerary. The items were all quite a bit more interesting than what was above in the public auction house, but nothing super noteworthy. Magic lamps, a golden pendant with a frost ward on it, dragon eggs pendants, actual very illegal dragon eggs, the whole nine yards. A couple of items did pique my interest.
The first was supposedly a Witch’s spellbook. This was notable because Witches didn’t need to write down their spells. When it came time for the auction I crowded around the book with a gaggle of other bidders, watching with bated breath as the auctioneer carefully opened the book and allowed us to actually get a look at the contents of it. To my surprise it was written in Kestrian, my native language. To my disappointment, however, the book wasn’t a spellbook, it was just a journal with some poems sprinkled in. I couldn’t sense any magic in the book, either, so it was at best the diary of a Witch and at worst a diary that was being passed off as the diary of a Witch. I never saw a name or any indication of who the diary actually belonged to on any of the pages they showed us. Still, I wasn’t about to piss off the Curadon by revealing the ruse, so I just shrugged and backed out of the crowd. I found some hot chocolate and an assortment of cheeses and wildly out-of-season fruits to snack on while I waited for the other interesting item to go to auction.
“Armlet of Defense,” the itinerary read. Hopefully, I found myself thinking, it was the real deal and not a fake being passed off as one to get some mundane to buy it. Soon enough it was time, and yet another crowd gathered around a different auctioneer. He made a big show of undoing the locks on a small case made of black lacquered wood, opening it up to reveal a red velvet interior with a plain-looking silver armlet resting inside. The only noteworthy thing about it was the bright green emerald set into the armlet. The auctioneer held the armlet up in one hand, a ball of magical light in the other, and turned it this way and that to let us inspect it. There was a rune inside the emerald, one that I knew meant ‘defense’. It was also radiating magic. It was legit. I frowned, wondering how much money I could spare on it. On the one hand it could be very useful…but on the other hand, if I bid too much here I ran the risk of not having enough for that mysterious final auction. Write-in bids were a gamble, too; if I bid too low I obviously wouldn’t get the item, if I bid too high it would be a waste of money…but if too many bids were around the same number it would go to a more traditional auction among the crowd of bidders, and I could easily end up paying ten times the amount the armlet was actually worth. Decisions, decisions. I took the slip of paper and pen offered to me by one of the purple dressed girls, also snagging a small flute of a delicious looking white wine from her. Sipping the wine, I contemplated. I tried to remember how much similar items had gone for in the past. I considered how much I’d be willing to pay for something like this if I found it in a shop around town. Ultimately I wrote down fifty thousand, folded the paper, and handed it over to the auctioneer. I finished off the wine while the auctioneer finished collecting papers from the gathered crowd, unfolding them and writing things in a small book. The wait grew tense as he finished, scanning what he’d written down in the book before closing it with an audible thump and a pleased grin.
“The winning bid goes to S. Mori with fifty thousand,” he announced. Surprised, I stepped forward with a grin. Trying to be discreet, I fished coins out of pockets in my cloak, my belt, and my boots until I’d produced the correct amount. The crowd dispersed, some with murmurs of disappointment, while the auctioneer inspected and counted the coins with the assistance of one of the purple dressed ladies. He eventually nodded his head, dropping all of the coins into a small black drawstring bag. A tall, imposing guy in a black suit approached, handing me a clipboard and taking the bag of coins from the auctioneer. I signed the deed of auction, waiting for the auctioneer to tear off the bottom half that was the receipt of sale. He handed both it and the box with the armlet in it to me with a wide grin.
“Pleasure doing business with you,” he said. I nodded and accepted the items.
“Likewise,” I said. I glanced at the far too fancy clock on the wall, noting the time. I didn’t care about getting a front-row seat for the final auction, so I still had plenty of time. None of the rest of the items on the itinerary sounded interesting, but there was still plenty of free food, drinks and, of course, booze. I still checked out some of the items, more out of a need to do something to pass the time than anything, while I snacked and drank. The alcohol they were serving wasn’t so alcoholic that it would get me drunk. I did have a bit of a higher alcohol tolerance than most people I’d gone drinking with, to be fair, but nothing they served was all that potent. It was still good, though.
Fortunately the remaining time passed quickly. I gave it an extra fifteen or so minutes before making my way into the rapidly filling auditorium. There was a sizable, well-lit wooden stage at the back with rows of plush chairs facing the stage. The chairs were bisected by a large walkway that was covered by an actual red carpet. Two more of the purple dressed ladies greeted me at the entrance to the room, one with a tray of drinks and the other an array of tiny cakes piled onto her platter. I gladly took a mug of tea and an adorable little green cake before making my way to a seat. The front rows were already filled with familiar faces. Most of them were older men, many of which I’d outbid on various auctions throughout the years. Behind them the seats were filled with people of all ages and genders. I ended up sitting in the middle, claiming an aisle seat with a little victorious smirk on my face. The room kept filling until at eight sharp the doors closed with a bang that startled most of the crowd, myself included. Normally they kept those doors open for a while into the auction. This was…strange.
Before panic could fully set in, a middle-aged, pudgy man sauntered out onto the stage.
“Distinguished guests,” he started, his voice magically amplified, “Congratulations on making it to the final auction of the evening. On behalf of Don Kariya himself, welcome to the 57th Auction of the White Bear, named both for the month it is typically held in, Ursian, and also for Zan Wict, the venerable wizard who…”
I tried not to tune him out. Really, I did. This was probably the seventh time I’d heard this speech in the past decade, and it didn’t seem like he was changing up the formula. Despite the fact that this was common knowledge, he would tell us all about the exploits of Zan Wict, one of the four great wizards of the old age who had possessed one of the Hecatus Stones. Most people knew the story of the Hecatus stones, the Zan, why we associated the seasons and named months after them. Most people learned the story as kids; this was not new information. After an overly verbose retelling of that he would then go on to remind us that the last known sighting of one of the Hecatus stones had been fifty years ago at this very auction house. The black stone Serpentarius had been sold to Ictus Krauze for a mind-bendingly high sum. Krauze had then fucked off back to his home country Xian with the stone, and then had almost certainly used it to start a war with Astor. The stone had gone missing about thirty years after that…but anyway, the point was that the stones were undeniably real, not just fairy tales, and they were somewhere…and the Curadon had sold off one of them fifty years ago. There was always a chance that another one would end up in one of these auctions. That was one of the many, many reasons I’d moved to Kiiren in the first place.
Is that what this auction was? An actual Hecatus stone? It seemed unlikely, but… it was possible. If it was I was sure to be outbid, especially knowing who was sitting in the front row seats. I sat forward in my seat as the auctioneer’s speech drew to a close, the audience applauding politely. Now, the real fun would begin.
“We will now reveal just what we are auctioning off here tonight. In our seventy five years of operating Itagaria auctions here in Kiiren City, we have only had around a dozen similar items,” he said. Ah, so not a Hecatus stone. Still, I was intrigued. The crowd murmured as the auctioneer turned to motion to someone standing off-stage. Not long after, two tall men in black suits began to haul something on stage.
No, not something. Someone. A person. I groaned. “Based on my bid history.” What a joke. In the ten years I’d been coming to these auctions I’d only won an auction for one person. One! Don Kariya sure had a demented sense of humor.
Okay, that sounds bad, but let me explain. It was rare, but people did get auctioned off at these Itagaria occasionally. Usually they had done something to get themselves indebted to the Curadon somehow. Bids got stupidly heated over them, especially if they could do any kind of magic. I chose to charitably believe that the bidders wanted these people as servants or guards or, I don’t know, cooks or something…or they did what I had done and let the person go after winning the bid. It’s a long story, but ten years ago at one of my first Itagaria auctions I’d managed to outbid everyone to ‘win’ a girl named Koreo. After a very…intense escape from Kiiren City we’d fled to the countryside, she’d vowed to pay me back, and she was now a free woman, co-owner of a lovely tavern out in Milin. Naturally, I’d made some enemies back then. Between that, the harrowing experience of escaping the city, and the dent it had made in my coffers…yeah, I wasn’t exactly keen on buying another person.
Caught up in reminiscing about the experience of escaping the city with Koreo, I almost completely missed the auctioneer ordering the two men to turn the mostly naked guy this way and that, showing him off to the audience from “all sides” as he put it. Ugh. The comments I heard from some of the people around me were gross. I mean, I got it. The guy was handsome. He had dark hair that hung down a little past his shoulders and he was well-built if just a little bit too skinny, like he’d been underfed for a while. He had the pale skin and almond-shaped eyes of someone from Xian and piercing green eyes, and— wait. Wait a fucking second, there was a tattoo on his shoulder that had me sitting up in my seat, eyes wide, nearly demanding that they turn his shoulder back toward me. The last time I’d seen that tattoo had been on the shoulder of my former mentor, the man that had taught me magic and basically everything. Lucien hadn’t once answered any of my questions about the tattoo, to my annoyance and frustration. There it was plain as day on this guy’s shoulder, a black raven, wings outstretched, beak open, attempting to swallow a black sun.
I started doing a mental tally of all the money I had on me, everything I had back at the apartment. I wondered if it would be enough. Would the Curadon let me come back later with more money, I wondered? I frowned down at the pocket where the letter from Don Kariya was. Had he just been teasing me about how I’d won the auction for Koreo a decade ago, or was there more to this…?
The bidding started at a paltry fifty thousand. I had around three million with me. Would that be enough? It wasn’t just the money, though — if I ran out I had ways of getting more. No, what concerned me more was what sort of problems this guy would have attached to him. If he was being sold off by the Curadon he was obviously in trouble already. How many thugs and minions would I have to fight my way through to get him safely out of Kiiren City? Or even back to my apartment to question him about that tattoo?
Sixty thousand. Seventy thousand. Eighty…ninety… in a few minutes, the bidding had escalated to over one million. This was par for the course even for more normal auctions where the item being bid on wasn’t a person. Most of the bidders were middle-aged men, but there were some women mixed in, too. I very intently decided to ignore the… lewd comments they were all making. They just wanted him to be a servant or a butler or something. Yeah. I tallied up the money I’d left in my apartment one last time as the bidding escalated to two million very quickly. The rapid fire bids hadn’t slowed down in the slightest even as we passed the two million mark. As we approached three million the bids finally started to slow down. I kept my eyes glued to the front row, honestly a welcome distraction from the distractingly attractive, mostly naked Xianese man on the stage. As predicted, I saw a middle-aged man with a stern face and salt-and-pepper hair raise his hand to bid. This was Soren Cario, a frequent attendee of the Itagaria and one of the men I’d outbid ten years ago to save Koreo. A hush fell over the crowd at his bid of three million. Habitual bidders knew that once Cario got involved it was almost certainly going to be a bid war between him and two other men, both of which were also seated in the front row. Once they got involved it was very, very rare that the winning bid went to anyone other than them. In the decade I’d been coming to these auctions it had only happened a handful of times—including my winning bid for Koreo. The real auction was truly beginning.
A short, fat, red-faced balding man raised his hand next, bidding three and a half million. Ixan Byars, another of what many people referred to as the “big three” bidders in these auctions. He and Cario had both sent minions, thugs, and actual assassins after me when I’d escaped with Koreo. I had no doubt that they’d be doing it again if I managed to win this auction. And I had to win this auction. I could not let information about that tattoo escape with them. I also kinda wanted to save this guy from what could and likely would be a pretty terrible fate. Even if they just wanted him to be their butler or gardener or whatever.
To my surprise, a middle-aged woman joined in on the bidding next, upping the bid to 3.7 million. I’d seen her around the auctions before, but I didn’t know her name. I didn’t know the name of the next guy that bid, increasing it to 3.8 million. Cario stepped back in, increasing the bid to four million. Another contender, the third of the “big three”, increased the bid to 4.2 million. Worose hadn’t sent assassins after me ten years ago, so he was pretty alright in my book. Hopefully he wouldn’t this time, either. Hopefully I also didn’t have anything to worry about from the lady, who increased the bid to 4.5 million. I was getting a little nervous now. The five bidders went back and forth a few times, the lady and the unknown guy eventually bowing out of the bidding war and leaving Cario, Byars and Worose. Worose dipped out when the bidding started inching closer to five million.
“Patrons of the Itagaria,” the voice of the auctioneer cut through the quiet murmuring of the audience and the petty squabbling of Cario and Byars. Everyone went silent and all eyes went to the stage. This was what I’d been waiting for. It was well-known that the Curadon would withhold a critical piece of information until the late stages of the auction, in order to drum up the bids. I leaned forward in my seat, breathless with anticipation. Would I learn something about that tattoo?
“As most of you know, we here at the Itagaria like to keep secret a key piece of information up until this point of the auction. Well, allow me to reveal it to you here and now: this man is an Accumulate.”
Utter chaos. Bidders that had bowed out of the auction long before Cario had started bidding were frantically shouting bids. Gone was the usual etiquette of one bid at a time. In short order, the auction had shot up to 8.5 million and I started to panic. If the bidding didn’t slow down I didn’t know if I could actually win it. This was now far more than what I had on hand and nearly more than what I had in total with the money back at my apartment.
The bidding did slow down, abruptly, when Cario, Byars and Worose stood up and faced each-other in the front row, each trying to intimidate the other. Nobody else in the audience was bidding, either out of a lack of money or a surplus of fear. Byars shouted nine million and Worose sat down with a huff. Byars and Cario went back and forth until nine and a half million. Byars sat down as well with a curse, leaving Cario standing.
“Nine and a half million. Going once, going twice…”
Time to act. I stood, swiftly but calmly. The auctioneer turned to look at me as I clearly shouted my bid.
“Ten million,” I said. Every single eye in the room turned to look at me, stunned. The auctioneer got a knowing look in his eye. He recognized me from the auction for Koreo, I realized. So did Cario, it seemed, who was glaring daggers at me…but not motioning to outbid me.
“Ten million, going once…”
The room was dead silent, all save for the auctioneer’s amplified voice. I could feel the audience staring at me, a young woman wearing casual civilian clothes who had just bid ten fucking million bullion. I just flashed a grin full of pomp and circumstance, not taking my eyes off of the auctioneer.
“Going twice…”
I saw movement behind the auctioneer, and noticed that the guy being auctioned was also staring at me in surprise. On closer inspection, I noticed that his hair was actually a very dark green and not black like I had originally thought. Interesting.
“Aaand sold for ten million!”
And just like that I had bought a person. Another person. Great. What was I getting myself into?
Still, I made my walk up to the stage with an air of utter confidence. I locked eyes with Cario as I passed him, giving him a polite but definitely not friendly smile. Oh, he remembered me. So did Byars, if the red-faced man’s expression of utter contempt was anything to go by. I could hear the audience behind me rising from their seats, murmurs of disappointment or excitement or just plain confusion as they shuffled their way out of the auditorium. Cario and Byars, pointedly, did not leave. Nor did their entourages.
A wooden table and two chairs had been brought onto the stage. The two suited men basically manhandled the dark-haired guy to sit in one chair while I was instructed to take the other seat. On the table were three items. One was a piece of paper containing a spot for my name, the date, and with the words “ten million bullion” written on it. Beside it were a quill pen and an inkwell, and on the other side of the paper was a small, sharp knife. Nothing had changed in ten years, it seemed. I wordlessly signed the paper with my real name: Spikora Mori. Giving a fake name wouldn’t do me any good, not when they wanted a blood seal, not when they already had my name anyway. I also filled in the date and dropped the quill back into the inkwell when I finished. I wasted no time in reaching for the knife. In short order, there was a bloody fingerprint underneath my name. It shone with a faint red light for a second, along with my signature, before the light faded. One of the hostess girls calmly took the knife out of my hands and replaced it with a clean, white bandage. I watched as they used the knife to prick the guy’s finger, and soon enough another signature and fingerprint joined mine and the contract was sealed.
With that I turned to the auctioneer with a bright, disarming smile.
"I don’t have the full amount with me," I said, cheerfully. I heard Byars seething where he stood at the base of the stairs leading up to the stage. The auctioneer nodded.
“That is wise. You would have to be out of your mind to carry ten million around this city, especially with no guards,” he said. Cario was swearing. I noticed two purple-clad hostess ladies approaching Cario and Byars, hands up and disarming, placating smiles on their faces. “In the event that you cannot complete the full payment, the opportunity will be given to the runner-up bidder, Mr. Cario, to purchase the item at the amount he bid. Should he be unable to pay—”
“I could give you her entire bid right now!” Cario barked in protest. The auctioneer simply ignored him, not even flinching at the murderous stare he was being given. I began to empty pouches and pockets, producing silver and gold and mythril coins from seemingly everywhere on my person. The auctioneer began to count and inspect the coins, magic shining from his fingertips as he did so. I dumped coins on the table and he put them in neat stacks, making marks in a book he’d produced from somewhere in his immaculately tailored suit. It took a while. I had a lot of coins on me. Once I’d finished I started fishing for magical items.
“I have several magical items on my person that could bring the total considerably closer to the amount I bid, provided the Curadon is gracious enough to accept trades or collateral,” I explained. The auctioneer aimed a smile at me that was somehow…mischievous? Knowing? In any case, he shook his head.
“That won’t be necessary. Altogether I count six and a half million, and Don Kariya himself has instructed us to allow the highest bidder up to two hours to deliver the rest of the bid to him directly, provided the amount is no more than half of the total,” he said. He winked when Cario and Byars both shouted in utter rage.
“Preposterous!” Cario shouted. “I demand a redo!” The auctioneer turned a placating smile to both of the outbid men.
“And go against explicit instructions from Don Kariya himself? I think not,” the auctioneer said. Byars paled and Cario scowled, but they both shut up. I had to work not to let it show, but two hours really wasn’t a long time, especially now that both Cario and Byars knew I had a time limit. I was definitely going to be fighting some assassins. Great. I looked down at the contract, sealed with my blood and… I got a good look at the name that the guy had signed, and luckily he’d signed in Calain so I could actually read it. Kir Yuen was his name. Kir Yuen, an Accumulate that had gotten himself in trouble with the Curadon. Kir Yuen, who had the same tattoo as Lucien. Hopefully I’d convince him to tell me about it before we had to start fighting our way through thugs and assassins.
Cario was still glowering as he turned to stalk out of the auditorium. Byars threw a smirk at me—yep, at the very least he was sending people after me. He followed Cario out, and I wondered if they were going to work together to take me out? I hoped not.
“Congratulations on your purchase!” one of the purple dressed ladies said. The two guys in black suits hauled Kir to his feet and shoved him toward me. He stumbled but managed to catch himself, finally looking at me. Barefoot he was just barely taller than me, and looked to be generally around the same age as me, I guessed. He was shivering, probably due to being nearly naked in this cold basement. Right. The first thing I’d need to do was get this guy some clothes, or he was probably going to freeze to death before we got to my apartment, assuming we didn’t get taken out by assassins first.
Well, I’d escaped Kiiren City with Koreo a decade ago. I could do it again.