Chương 82: 33-3.Bidding, Bumping the Price, and Bound Female Knight

I barely registered a single lot after that. Not because the White Wing Crown had run out of things worth looking at. If anything, the opposite — whatever found its way onto that stage, whether human, artifact, or something that had no business circulating in public markets, tended to be the sort of thing that held ordinary people's attention without effort.

But from the moment that hammer fell, my eyes kept drifting back to the side door with the kind of involuntary persistence that no amount of discipline seemed to fix. That was where they had taken Adeline. The sound of chains on wood had long since stopped. The curtain behind the door had gone quiet again. But the sensation of something being dragged off-stage and compressed into the back rooms wouldn't leave the inside of my ears — it clung there, refusing to be shaken loose.

"Stop looking at that door." Olivia hadn't turned her head. She simply tilted her wine glass slightly, as though finding the residual sweetness on the rim faintly offensive.

"If you keep staring, even the least observant person in this room will know your bid wasn't impulsive."

"It wasn't impulsive."

"I know," she said evenly.

"That's why I'm telling you to stop looking." I dragged my gaze back to the stage. The second lot had already been brought out — a pair of silver candelabras from an Old Civilization workshop, the stems carved into figures of half-spread-winged women, the bases set with blue stones that hadn't entirely lost their luminescence. In another setting, they might have drawn genuine admiration.

Here, they were a palate cleanser — a mechanical device for lifting the room out of the odd stillness that had settled after the previous lot and getting the gears turning again. Bids began. The hall resumed its low, warm hum. I used my peripheral vision to check Matthews. The old soldier was still seated toward the back, spine straight, both hands resting flat on his knees — posture that, taken at face value, was completely unremarkable.

But I had known him long enough that I could read the line of his jaw from across a room. Right now, he was clenching hard enough to leave marks. This wasn't him holding back a momentary impulse. This was him forcing an entire history — instinct and all — back down his own throat. If Olivia hadn't bought us breathing room with those few sentences, if the lights in here hadn't been this bright and the eyes this numerous, I had no doubt he would already be on his feet. Not for the sake of heroics.

Not for old sentiment. For the particular, incurable habit that old soldiers carried like a second wound — the reflex that fired whenever someone who should be standing under a military banner was instead being appraised like livestock. But he couldn't. Because right now he wasn't an Imperial soldier. He wasn't anyone's standard-bearer. He was just the quiet man in our group — the one with the old leg injury, the one who occasionally fixed wagon wheels without being asked. So he sat.

And made it look like nothing was happening.

"Jessi." Olivia said it softly, without moving her lips more than necessary — the tone of someone asking for a refill. Jessi, leaning against a pillar a short distance away, lifted her eyes without answering.

"Rear holding room. Transfer registry. The duty manager's shift rotation." Olivia kept her gaze on the stage, her voice carrying the inflection of someone reciting a dinner order.

"Those three things. That's all I need." Jessi made a quiet sound that might have been a scoff.

"You don't hold back, do you."

"If you find it inconvenient, say so now."

"It's not that I find it inconvenient." She flicked a strand of hair back from her shoulder, her gaze sliding from me to Olivia and settling there.

"I just don't like the way you say it — like you're giving instructions to your household staff." A beat.

"But fine. Honestly, it's more efficient than watching a certain someone burn a hole through that curtain with his eyes." The jab was sharp, but her volume was controlled — just enough to reach our circle and no further. She straightened from the pillar without urgency, picked up a wine glass she hadn't touched from the nearest surface, and drifted away along the outer edge of the room.

To anyone watching, she might have been looking for familiar company, or simply searching for the next unfortunate soul capable of entertaining her. I knew — and Olivia had clearly intended — that this was precisely the right way to send her. In Angel City, the more purposeful you looked, the more attention you drew. The person who looked like they didn't think much of anyone was the one who moved through a room without leaving a wake.

"Alvira." Olivia spoke again. The elven girl seated further in the shadows tilted her head slightly, a thin line of light catching beneath the brim of her hat.

"Go up one level. Find a sightline. Don't approach the rear access doors, and don't touch any binding wards you find. If anyone moves first, I only need you to remember which door they went through." Alvira didn't ask why. She gave a single small nod, rose from her seat without the chair making a sound, and her silhouette slipped into the edge of the lamplight and was simply — gone. As though the room had quietly lost one of its pieces.

I watched her disappear, then finally asked in a low voice:"When did you start planning all of this?"

"When you said two hundred and fifty." She answered without hesitation.

"... And you still looked that calm?" She turned her eyes toward me at last. The lights from the stage were reflected in them, and yet they were colder than any of those lights.

"Because someone had to be." The sentence didn't carry much weight. And yet it landed on my shoulders like it did. I didn't answer. She was right. If she had come unsteady at the same moment I did, we wouldn't be sitting here right now. We'd be in a different room entirely — the kind where the tea is poured for you whether you want it or not. The auction continued. Third lot. Fourth. Fifth.

Old craftsmanship, rare medicinal materials, and at one point a short blade allegedly stained with the blood of a southern front general. The room warmed back up by degrees — wine, voices, women's laughter, and the bright percussion of coin against coin all blending into something like an overcooked broth: surface noise, bottom filth. And then, naturally, Vallejo decided not to leave me alone. He materialized at our table with the air of someone passing by incidentally, a freshly poured glass in hand.

Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more.

"Lord Cedric seems rather subdued this evening," he said pleasantly.

"Has nothing else caught your eye?"

"Is having high standards a problem?"

"At the White Wing Crown? Not at all." Vallejo's smile was mild.

"Only — people with high standards tend to be particular. Especially first-time visitors to Angel City who are willing to take delivery of this kind of lot." He kept his voice light on those last words, like setting down a small hook — whether to catch my temper or my background, I wasn't entirely certain. I picked up my glass. Didn't drink. Turned it slowly between my fingers.

"You set the price, I paid it. Does your establishment also require clients to submit a family history before completing a purchase?"

"For ordinary guests, certainly not." Vallejo looked at me, his smile steady.

"But the lot you acquired is — somewhat particular."

"Particular how?"

"Particular in the sense that if handled carelessly, she tends to attract additional complications." He paused, his tone walking the line between advisory and probing.

"And I am not, personally, fond of complications." I nearly laughed at that. In places like this, nine out of ten people made their living manufacturing complications. The remaining one made theirs cleaning up after the other nine. Vallejo was clearly the latter — which was precisely why, when he said he disliked complications, he was the most convincing person in the room.

"Then your grievance is with whoever put her on the stage," I said.

"Not with whoever paid enough to take her off it."

"That's a fair point." He nodded, as though genuinely acknowledging the logic, but his gaze drifted — with a quality of studied casualness — toward Matthews at the back.

"Still, I must ask on behalf of the White Wing Crown — none of the people you've brought with you tonight would happen to know her, would they?" The air thinned by one degree. I didn't need to look back to know what Matthews' face looked like right now. Under the table, Olivia touched the back of my hand. Barely a contact at all. But it was enough to press the heat rising in my throat back down to where it belonged. She was telling me: don't flinch on someone else's behalf.

I looked at Vallejo and let my voice go one shade flatter.

"Your establishment checks its clients' personal acquaintances as standard procedure?"

"Merely routine confirmation."

"Then my routine answer is: no." I set the glass down, quiet enough that it didn't ring.

"And even if someone did — once a person passes through that door and goes up on that stage, they become your inventory. Isn't that right?" Vallejo looked at me for two full seconds. Then he laughed — and this time there was something genuine in it. The precise calibration was gone. For a moment, it was just a man finding something unexpectedly funny.

"Lord Cedric, you are considerably better suited to Angel City than I initially estimated."

"That is not a compliment."

"In a city where surviving counts as an achievement — it is." He lifted his glass and finally moved away. Only after his figure had fully dissolved back into the crowd did I release a slow breath, and notice that my knuckles had gone white at some point without my permission.

"He's suspicious," I said quietly.

"He's been suspicious since the beginning," Olivia replied.

"Now he's decided to keep the suspicion and see if it grows into something more profitable." She said it with her gaze still fixed on the stage, as though genuinely following the next lot. But her pace of speech had slowed — measured, deliberate — the cadence of someone who had already disassembled the entire situation into components and was quietly checking which ones could be touched and which ones would collapse the moment pressure was applied. Before long, Jessi came back.

She set an empty glass on the table with the easy manner of someone who had simply gone for a stroll.

"Right corridor behind the stage, third door in — that's the holding rooms. The registry isn't there; it's with a ledger-keeper who has a small mustache. Shift change is a quarter-hour after the hall clears. Four guards on the door — two are White Wing Crown, two look like they came with the Syndicate directly." She paused, mouth pulling to one side.

"Also — you were right. They dosed her again. Probably worried she'd come around during the transfer and say something inconvenient." Olivia gave a small nod. Not a word of acknowledgment wasted. She simply absorbed the information and placed each piece, one by one, back onto the board.

"And Alvira?" I asked.

"Clear view from above." It was Olivia who answered, not Jessi — without even shifting her gaze, as though the information had already been delivered and filed.

"Two stairways connecting the back rooms to the exterior. The near one is easy to block. The far one runs through the kitchen and service corridors. Dirty. But disorganized." I looked at her.

"When did she—""She came back once while you weren't paying attention." Olivia finished speaking and finally lifted the wine glass in front of her — only to let it touch her lips and no further. Something strange moved through me then. The White Wing Crown was still running exactly as it had been — lights, bids, guests, laughter, the whole elaborate machinery of it unchanged. But beneath the surface of the table, Olivia had quietly shifted several threads.

She had moved our group from the position of people who had nearly been seen through, and turned us into people who were now measuring someone else's footsteps. And it was only in that moment that I understood something clearly. She wasn't managing the fallout of my decisions. She was running the operation. By the time the auction moved toward its close, the energy in the hall had shed its earlier edge and taken on the blurred, restless quality of people who had been drinking for several hours.

Some guests were already leaving. Others were leaning in close with brokers they knew, discussing follow-up arrangements in low voices. The master of ceremonies delivered his closing remarks in a voice smooth enough to skate on. I had been sitting long enough that my shoulders had gone stiff — and I still couldn't stand up yet. Because Vallejo had come back. This time he had someone with him: a thin-faced man in a grey long coat, narrow eyes, a neatly trimmed ring of beard at the jaw. He didn't look like muscle.

He looked like the kind of person whose professional specialty was keeping meticulous records of both accounts and grudges.

"Thank you for your patience." Vallejo's tone was warm in a way that had nothing to do with warmth.

"A few small formalities before the transfer — we appreciate your understanding."

"I'm starting to wonder if the White Wing Crown includes complications in the listed price," I said, rising from my seat and letting a thread of impatience into my voice.

"The fact that you were willing to pay that price suggests the complications remain within acceptable limits." Vallejo smiled, then turned slightly to indicate the man beside him.

"This is the evening's record-keeper. Standard registration — it won't take long." The grey-coated man lowered his head in my direction. His eyes didn't follow.

"Name. Temporary address. And in the event that the merchandise — that the young lady encounters any difficulties after transfer — who bears responsibility." He caught himself and corrected it, but not quite fast enough. I gave my name. For the address, I mentioned only the general vicinity of the building in Kuroga's district — no details. The grey-coated man wrote slowly, as though each entry needed to be weighed before it was committed to paper. Halfway through, he looked up.

"Should the young lady have any outstanding obligations — matters of identity or prior debts — is the Lord willing to assume those as well?" That question was more direct than anything that had come before it. The noise of the room was still there. And yet that particular pocket of air felt, for a moment, very still.

"Since I've purchased her," I said, looking at him, "who exactly would be in a position to negotiate her liabilities with me?" The grey-coated man didn't smile. He simply pressed his pen tip against the paper.

"Some liabilities cannot be settled with money."

"Then I'll assess whether they're worth the trouble of a blade." After that sentence, even Vallejo went quiet for a moment. Olivia chose that moment to stand. She moved without haste — the hem of her dress brushing the chair leg with a sound like a quiet exhale — but the moment she was on her feet, both Vallejo and the record-keeper turned toward her on instinct.

"If the two of you have finished your questions," she said, "perhaps we might proceed to verifying that what the White Wing Crown has been keeping on our behalf remains in acceptable condition." The sentence was neither sharp nor loud. But it repositioned everyone in the room. We were not the ones being interrogated. They were the ones who owed us a delivery. Vallejo looked at her. The thinness in his smile went one degree thinner.

"Of course." He turned and made a gesture of invitation. As we followed him toward the rear of the hall, I deliberately slowed half a step, letting Matthews fall in behind me. I didn't look back. I just dropped my voice low.

"Can you hold it together?" Half a beat passed before he answered.

"... I can hold it." His voice had the texture of sandpaper dragged across iron. I didn't ask again. In moments like this, a second question was just a finger pressed into a wound. The back rooms were dimmer than the main hall, the perfume thinner. In its place: damp wood, medicinal solution, and something organic that no amount of cleaning had fully removed. The corridor wasn't narrow, but it made you walk as though it were — as though the walls on either side were slowly pressing inward.

Everything that had looked polished and regulated from the front of the stage showed its rust the moment you stepped behind it. There were, as expected, guards at the third door. Two in the White Wing Crown's black coats, two in the Syndicate's grey cloaks, each leaning against the wall with the particular vacancy of people who had stopped thinking of the things behind that door as people some time ago. Vallejo stopped and turned toward us with a smile calibrated to exactly the right degree of courtesy.

"Adeline von Brandt is currently inside receiving final preparation. The sedative has been discontinued and water has been provided. If you wish to conduct an inspection, please allow a brief moment." I heard the words final preparation and felt something cold move through my stomach. But Olivia was already speaking before I could.

"There's no rush," she said.

"She's been purchased — she isn't going anywhere. What concerns me more is whether she can still walk unassisted, whether she can still speak, and whether there are any injuries the White Wing Crown has chosen not to disclose in advance." Vallejo's smile didn't waver.

"You ask very thorough questions."

"I simply dislike unprofitable transactions." She said it with perfect equanimity, as though profit were genuinely her only concern. But I knew better. Because as she finished the sentence, the edge of her fan tapped my wrist once, beneath the line of her sleeve. Her second clear signal of the evening. She had seen everything she needed to see. The room. The guards. The layout. The angles of approach. What remained now wasn't a question of whether to act.

It was a question of how to remove one person from the White Wing Crown's ledger while everyone in the building still believed we were playing by their rules.