Chương 174: 18. Return of the Raven 2

The auction house was more stomach-turning than I had anticipated. Not in scale—it couldn't compare to the grand halls of the capital, the kind built for banquets and displaying spoils of war.

But precisely because it was compact, every element that had been compressed inside it—heat, alcohol, body odor, brine, leather, cheap perfume, and the particular metallic smell of money changing hands in places it probably shouldn't—had been sealed together like ingredients in a massive wooden barrel, fermenting into something uniquely, specifically Blackbeard Bay. Crooked rows of oil lamps hung from the rafters.

Daylight cut through gaps in the planking and high windows, dropping columns of light through the dusty air. Wooden railings formed rings around the interior, and behind them stood every variety of person the port had to offer—sailors, smugglers, brokers, merchants, madams, enforcers, opportunists, wealthy men with nowhere better to spend, and the particular type who you could identify at a glance as being there not to buy goods but to buy information.

The noise of it all sat thick in the air, like a pot of filthy soup that had been simmering far too long. And when Marro led us through the front entrance, that soup went quiet for half a beat. Genuinely quiet. Not everyone stopped talking—but the whole building seemed to simultaneously register: something has entered. A few gazes hit Marro first. Then, as if pulled by the same hand, they slid past him and locked onto Ignicia.

In that moment I understood, for the first time and with complete physical clarity, what it meant for a gaze to feel like a hand. Someone whistled. Someone muttered something low that didn't require translation to identify as offensive. Several people narrowed their eyes with the focused expression of someone calculating whether a purchase was worth pursuing. Others didn't say a word. They simply set their cups down and leaned forward half an inch. Half an inch was enough.

Enough to tell me every single bastard in the room had seen exactly what they needed to see.

"... Remember what he said last night," I said through teeth that were barely parted, voice low enough that it was more a reminder to myself than to anyone else. Don't draw. Don't move first. Don't be the idiot who ruins everything. Marro walked us into the side pen area with the complete composure of someone who didn't register the weight of every eye in the building, and positioned Ignicia at the most visible spot that still required crossing an extra half-step to reach.

A waist-high wooden railing enclosed the display area, and beside it hung a blank tag waiting for a price to be written. Marro took up position in front of the railing and swept his gaze around the room. That single eye carried no anger and no amusement. It simply moved across the building in one slow, complete pass. The noise level dropped another notch.... This man's weight in Blackbeard Bay was considerably greater than I'd estimated.

"Seen enough?" Marro said, voice unhurried, somehow carrying across the full noise of the building without effort.

"Today's inventory is not salted fish, not broken bones, and not the same goods half of you already handled yesterday and decided weren't worth the price. Anyone with working eyes can look for themselves." A low wave of laughter moved through the crowd. It had malice in it, and appetite, but nobody spoke out of turn after that opening line. That single sentence wasn't just an introduction. It was him pressing his hand flat on the table, establishing control.

A heavyset merchant with a yellow beard pushed forward first, looking Ignicia up and down with eyes that gleamed with greasy appreciation.

"Marro, where'd you pull this one from? She doesn't look southern coast." Marro didn't even grant him a full look.

"Afford her first. Then ask about the origin." Another wave of laughter. The merchant's expression soured briefly, but he didn't push back—he snorted and stepped aside. Evidently, getting publicly shut down by Marro wasn't an unusual occurrence here. This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there. More people drifted closer. Some opened with comments that didn't deserve repetition. Some adopted a professional tone, asking about teeth, scars, temperament.

Some simply stood outside the railing and watched with the unblinking focus of people evaluating whether the thing in the cage might tear through the bars. Ignicia said nothing throughout any of it. She simply stood. Too straight. Too still. Too much like someone who was not being displayed for sale but had temporarily, voluntarily, permitted herself to be placed here. That wrongness—the sense that the arrangement was entirely on her terms—made her look more valuable. And considerably more dangerous.

I stood nearby, arms wrapped around a bundle of old cloth and rope, doing my best to compress myself into a presence as forgettable as a dock piling. Which was, honestly, difficult. Because every time someone's gaze settled on Ignicia and stayed there a beat too long, my hands tightened on the rope without my permission. And every time they tightened, I had to curse myself back to stillness. Easy. You're not here to cut anyone. Not yet.

Marro's words from the night before had lodged somewhere behind my eyes and weren't moving. —Even if someone stands directly in front of you and examines her like livestock at market, you do not draw your sword first. I had thought, at the time, that I could roughly imagine what that would feel like. I had been optimistic. This wasn't discomfort. This was having a knife drawn slowly across your nerves, one millimeter at a time, while being required to stand in place and nod along as though nothing was happening.

"Hey, boy." A tall, lean broker clapped a hand on my shoulder, breathing out a combination of alcohol and tobacco that arrived before the rest of him.

"Does this one bite?" I came extremely close to snapping his wrist. Extremely. The margin was genuinely small. Instead I forced the impulse down, dropped my chin, and answered in the flat, hollow register of someone who had never in his life had opinions worth expressing:"Depends whether you're hard enough to kill." The broker blinked, then barked a laugh, slapped my shoulder again, and moved off. A few people nearby joined in. I returned to my position without expression. Internally, only one thought remained.

—Well done, Cedric. You've learned to insult people without drawing steel. This counts as personal development. Somewhat tragic in its direction, but development nonetheless. The room had reached that particular peak of energy—wound tight, appetite high, but no one yet willing to commit to serious money—when the crowd shifted. Not everyone stepped back. But some subtle pressure moved through the room, and the people who had been standing closest found themselves, without quite deciding to, opening a gap.

I raised my head and saw a man walk in. He was dressed plainly—a deep gray-blue coat, ordinary fabric, cut without vanity, the kind of thing worn by a merchant who had made several solid deals recently and had money to spend but no interest in announcing it. Somewhere in his early thirties, features that didn't register as handsome, or as anything in particular—features so thoroughly average that if you looked away for a moment, you would struggle to reconstruct them. Which was precisely what was wrong.

His boots carried the dust of the harbor front, but without the loose, settled quality of someone who had actually been walking the docks. His cuffs were pressed flat with the habit of a man who left no loose edges on himself. His hands were clean, but at the borders of his fingernails, there were faint thin calluses—not the kind produced by rough labor, but the kind left by long-term contact with small metal instruments held at precise angles. Most importantly— His first look at Ignicia didn't go to her face.

Didn't go to her neckline. Didn't go to the line of her figure beneath the skirt. He looked first at her posture. Then at her hands. Then, finally, at her eyes. That was not the sequence in which a buyer assessed merchandise. That was the sequence in which a hunting dog determined whether the animal across from it was capable of biting back. Something cold moved down my spine. Marro had clearly seen him too.

The loose, faintly sardonic quality at the corner of his mouth pulled back by half a degree—but didn't disappear.

"Unexpected," Marro said.

"I'd have thought someone who only deals in clean business wouldn't set foot in a place like this." The man smiled. The smile was exactly right—practiced to land precisely where it needed to.

"Good merchandise doesn't care about the venue," he said. His voice was low, carrying a quality of smoothness that was too consistent, too controlled.

"Only whether it's worth the price." I stood nearby and felt something settle in my chest like a stone dropped into still water. Too smooth. Everyone in this port—no matter how well they performed respectability—carried something in their voice. Salt. Heat. Alcohol. The rough edge of someone accustomed to throwing money at problems. This man had none of it. He spoke like someone who measured each word for length before releasing it. Not here to buy. Here to trace a supply line.

"Since that's the case," Marro said, lifting his chin, "what's your offer?" The man didn't answer immediately. He stepped forward two paces, stopping at a distance precisely calibrated to be safe while allowing close examination—his gaze settling on Ignicia once more.

"May I confirm a few things first?"

"No," Marro replied, without hesitation. A few muffled laughs rippled through the crowd. The man didn't bristle. He simply nodded, as though he had anticipated exactly that response. Then he said:"Thirty gold Suns." The entire auction house went silent. Even I nearly convinced myself I had misheard. Thirty gold Suns. That wasn't a probing offer. It wasn't posturing. It wasn't the kind of number some dilettante threw out to feel important. That was urgency.

Urgency to lock down the acquisition before anyone else could move. Urgency to force other bidders off the board. Urgency disguised as a sum so outrageous it would punch a hole straight through the center of the table rather than simply raise the stakes. The room detonated a second later.

"Thirty? Have you lost your mind?!"

"You could buy a small ship for that!"

"Marro, what kind of cursed thing did you dredge up this time?!" People jeered, cursed, frantically recalculated. Others went quiet in a different way—the silence of people who had just realized this was no longer ordinary commerce. And in that instant, I arrived at a certainty I had been building toward since he walked in. This man had a problem. A very specific, very serious problem. Not a lecher. Not a slaver. Not a wealthy eccentric with exotic tastes. He was buying a key.

A key he needed in his possession immediately, before the window closed forever. I didn't look at Marro. I simply shifted the bundle of old cloth in my arms and, behind it, tapped the wooden railing twice with my fingers. The signal we had agreed on the night before. Release. Marro's peripheral vision caught the movement for less than a heartbeat. That was enough. Then he smiled—deeper than before, the way a fisherman's face changes when he finally feels real weight on the line.

"Sold," he said.