“Seven,” another countered, also in military dress.
“Ten.”
“Twelve!”
The price climbed.
I stood there, frozen, as men bid for the right toownme, to use me however they saw fit. I tried not to look at their faces, tried not to see the hunger in some eyes, the cold calculation in others, but I couldn’t help it. My gaze caught on a merchant in the third row—a middle-aged, well-fed man whose smile felt like the oily bottom of a cooking pot. He met my eyes and winked. I looked away so fast my neck popped.
The first military man shook his head, dropping out. The second smiled, clearly believing he’d won.
“Fifteenryo,” he called triumphantly.
Silence.
The auctioneer raised his mallet. “Fifteenryo, going once—”
Still nothing.
“Going twice.”
Wind fluttered nearby banners.
The soldier turned away.
The fat merchant licked his fat lips.
The auctioneer’s gavel began to fall.
“Twenty-five.”
The gavel froze as the auctioneer craned to find the speaker. The voice was female, clear and commanding, yet soft somehow. It was hard to name, like grasping wind.
The crowd gasped. Heads turned. The man eating his bun actually stopped chewing.
A woman strode forward, and even from the stage, I could see she was unlike anyone else in the square, possibly in the whole of the capital. Herkimonowas midnight blue embroidered with silver cranes, her hair black as night and styled with ornaments that captured the light. Her lips were painted the deep red of blood, and her face—gods, her face was like something from a scroll painting, beautiful and terrible and utterly confident.
But it was her eyes that held me. Dark, assessing, missing nothing. She studied me the way a craftsman might examine a piece of wood—seeing not just what it was, but what it could become. She roamed my face, the contours of my jaw, then trailed down to my arms, to my chest, and beyond.
One perfectly shaped brow rose, then she raised a fan decorated with cherry blossoms, the gesture small but unmistakable.
The crowd murmured.
People stepped back, creating space around her.
Whispers started:
“Is that—”
“—twenty-fiveryo, for a—”
“—can’t believeshe—”
The military man blanched. He opened his mouth as if to counter-bid, then closed it. His companion touched his arm, shaking his head urgently.
“Twenty-fiveryo,” the auctioneer called, and something in his voice had changed, lost its bravado, become deferential. “Going once . . . twice . . .” He brought the mallet down with a sharp crack. “Sold! To Yubi Momoko-sama.”
-sama?Was this woman a royal? A member of the Imperial household?
