Chapter 324: The Humble Handler

Lady Hue escorted me out of the hall and into a backroom.

It wasn’t empty. Scattered across crimson sofas, a dozen or so figures sat in careful isolation, legs crossed, hands folded, the kind of stillness that looked practiced. Some sat alone. A few in pairs, leaning close enough to whisper but never quite touching. Every one of them wore a mask. Fox faces. Oni faces. One that looked disturbingly like a green man, though I doubted they called it that here.

None of them looked up when I entered.

I followed Lady Hue past all of them without a word, through another door, into a second lounge. This one was empty. She turned to face me.

“You can wait here. From this room you’ll hear the auction as it proceeds. I’ll register your items and return to join you while you await the results.”

I nodded and took a seat. She continued toward the back door without another glance.

For a moment, everywhere was silent.

Then a voice punched through the walls, loud and theatrical enough that I straightened in my chair.

“Alright, you all ready?! This one is very rare, the kind of rare that makes even me, your humble Host, want to bid on it!”

’Humble. Sure.’

“There was an age where dragons walked our world in flesh! Millions of years ago, you might not believe it, but our scholars and engineers have assembled the archaeological proof. Dragons were real, and we see their legacy carried in the Dragonborn! But this, ladies and gentlemen, this is the real thing. Two stones that sedimented because there was no dragon left alive to hatch them. Opening at fifty thousand gold crowns!”

My mouth fell open.

’Fifty thousand for rocks?’

Fifty thousand gold crowns could fund a mercenary company for a season. It could buy property in a mid-tier district of Recimiras. And someone was about to spend it on a pair of stones that a dragon hadn’t bothered to hatch a million years ago.

“Oh! Number Seven, fifty thousand! Any other bid? Going for fifty, going, going, gooooinnnng—”

“Seventy thousand!”

“Oh, and there it is! Number Eleven, and these dormant dragon stones are sitting at seventy thousand!”

“Hundred.”

The host’s voice climbed another register.

“A HUNDRED! Yes! Now we’re talking—”

He wasn’t even done before another voice cut through.

“Two hundred.”

“Two hundred gold crowns flying! Going for two hundred, going, going, and GONE for two hundred thousand gold crowns!”

I sat there with my jaw still hanging.

Two hundred thousand. Decorative fossils that would never hatch, never breathe fire, never do anything except sit on a shelf and look impressive while someone’s grandchildren dusted them.

’And here I am, looking for money to go back home.’

I shook my head and leaned back, but the host didn’t give me time to process.

“Now then, now then. This next piece, my friends, is not for collectors.” His voice dropped, and the shift was immediate, warmer. Like he’d leaned in and was speaking to each bidder individually. “This is for those of you who came here tonight because you need something. And you know who you are.”

For a moment there was silence in the hall.

“The Jaw of Reth-Kaal. A greatsword forged by the Ironmonk Ascetics before their monastery was swallowed by the Ashlands of Ashara. The blade is made of living ore, which means it sharpens itself, repairs itself, and, my friends, it gets hungry. It hasn’t been fed in over three centuries and I am told it is very, very eager to work. Opening at thirty thousand gold crowns.”

This time the bidding was different. No immediate frenzy. The voices came measured, careful, each one placed like a chess move.

“Thirty-five.”

“Forty.”

“Forty-five.”

The host chuckled, and there was something knowing in it. “Forty-five from Number Three. Forty-five thousand for a blade that has been waiting three hundred years for a worthy hand.” He paused for a moment. “Number Nineteen, you’ve been awfully quiet tonight. I know you didn’t come here for decorative stones.”

There was silence. Then, reluctantly:

“Sixty.”

The host let out a low whistle. “There she is. Sixty thousand from Nineteen.”

’He just pressured someone into bidding. He called them out by number and made it personal.’

I was starting to understand that this man wasn’t an announcer. He was a handler. He knew who was in the room, what they wanted, and exactly which buttons to press to make them spend more than they’d planned.

“Sixty-five.”

“Seventy.”

“Sold! Seventy thousand gold crowns for the Jaw of Reth-Kaal, to Number Three! May it eat well in your service.”

The next item came faster, and the host’s tone shifted again. Sharper now. Colder.

“Ladies and gentlemen, I won’t dress this one up. Some of you know what it is before I say it. The rest of you will understand soon enough.”

A beat of quiet. The man was good at those.

“A Writ of Unfettered Passage. Signed and sealed by the Harbor Authority of Serathi. It grants the bearer unrestricted movement through every port, checkpoint, and border crossing within the Northern Corridor for a period of five years. No inspections, tariffs. Not even questions. They wouldn’t dare!”

’Oh wow, I certainly wouldn’t mind that one.’

He didn’t bother with an opening price. He just said, “Bid.”

“Two hundred thousand.”

“Three hundred.”

“Half a million.”

The bids came hard and fast, voices crashing into each other, and something in the room changed. The earlier items had been sport. Rich people buying expensive trinkets. This was different. I could hear it in the way the voices thinned, the way the pauses between bids shortened. This wasn’t collectors playing at wealth. This was people fighting over something that would reshape their operations for half a decade.

“One million.”

“One million, two hundred thousand.”

“One point five.”

Another voice, flat and final: “Two million.”

The host let the number sit. Five seconds. Ten. I counted.

“Two million gold crowns. Going once. Going twice.”

No one responded to him.

“Sold. Two million to Number Twenty-Two.”

He said it quietly and respectfully.

I found myself leaning forward without realizing it. Somewhere in the last few minutes I’d stopped thinking of this as background noise and started treating it like entertainment.

“I bring to you yet another beauty of rarity!” The host’s warmth returned, his voice filling the room like he’d missed it. “This is The White Hour! The oldest wine in existence today! It is said that this wine was brewed by the First Emperor of the Zharic Empire before the Empire was even founded, over eight thousand years ago!”

“This wine’s value is not in the wine itself, but in the hands it has crossed! From the Emperor’s own son, to the First Pope of the Church, to the Crimson Tyrant who brought down the Empire! It is said that he razed the Fifteenth Emperor’s brewery and took every last bottle! The White Hour has rolled its way through millennia, and it could spend the rest of its days fulfilling the desires of your personal collection, if you’re willing to open at a hundred thousand gold crowns!”

’What the actual fuck?’

A hundred thousand for wine. The dragon stones, at least, were ancient. The greatsword could actually kill things. The passage writ was pure strategic value. But wine? Wine that was probably vinegar by now? And the host hadn’t even finished his pitch before voices started climbing over each other.

“I’ll take it for five hundred thousand.”

“Ohhhh! Gracious gods! Five hundred thousand!!”

“Seven hundred thousand.”

“One million!”

“ONE MILLION! ONE MILLION GOLD CROWNS!”

Silence for a beat. Then a calm voice, unhurried, the kind that didn’t need volume.

“Five million.”

“FIVE MILLION! BLESS THE GODS, FIVE MILLION GOLD CROWNS FOR THE WHITE HOUR!!!”

The host sounded like his lungs were about to burst, and honestly, I couldn’t blame him. Five million gold crowns. Not for what the wine tasted like, but for where it had been. For whose table it had sat on. For the story stitched into the bottle.

’These people aren’t buying things. They’re buying history. And history, apparently, is worth more than anything that actually does something.’

I leaned back in my seat.

“I know what I’d do with five million gold crowns.”

Kassie, most of all. She’d be thrilled. I could travel to some country where titles were for sale and buy my nobility outright. I could even try Recimiras, start an organization of my own. Though I wasn’t sure Levi would sell his, even if I could afford it.

I cleared my throat, catching myself spending money that wasn’t mine.

’Already furnishing the house before you’ve signed the deed.’

But something the host had said was sitting wrong.

The fall of the Zharic Empire. I knew that story. Kassie had told me pieces, and Lira had filled in the rest. The Empire fell because of the Tyrant Empress. Kassandra. Her.

But the host had said the Crimson Tyrant. And he’d said he. He razed the brewery. He took the bottles.

He…

I turned the word over in my head.

Either the pages of history had swapped Kassie’s gender deliberately, or Kassie had been lying to me about her role in the Empire’s fall. One of those options was significantly more unsettling than the other, and I wasn’t sure which.

’Perhaps I need to go home and ask Kassie if she ever raided a brewery.’

Though knowing her, she’d find a way to make even that sound dignified.

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