Pleasure traders were a brand-new class of shadow fae, and all of us were criminals, because owning a Joy Vessel outside of a royal court was a crime. It was possible only in Ashgate, the city of crime.
There was no official ruler of Ashgate. The city belonged to no one. It claimed to be free and answer to nobody, but crime ruled here, and Ray and Mazra were the two most powerful criminals. Both had turned to trading joy and pleasure, like me. Unlike me, however, they had the money to buy Joy Vessels and the power to fight for them if needed. It was a true miracle that I’d managed to get my hands on one after all.
My Joy Vessel crouched on the grass rug on the floor. The rug was the only furnishing in here aside from the wooden chest by the wall where I stored the few weapons I had kept even though I could no longer use any of them effectively. Throwing a spear or wielding a sword didn’t work as well when sitting in a chair. Even shooting arrows from a bow was no longer the same for me. The only weapons I had on me now were a set of three throwing knives in the triple sheath strapped to my left thigh under my skirt.
With her back to the wall, the Joy Vessel hugged her scruffy gray sweater around herself. The day's heat beaded with perspiration on her forehead, plastering the brown strands of her hair to her bizarrely light-colored skin, yet she wouldn’t let go of that sweater.
“What do you want with me?” she asked, licking her lips.
I noticed that her lips were cracked and peeling, dried out by the merciless desert that she’d crossed to get here.
“Are you thirsty?” I asked in turn, not answering her question. “I have some water?—”
I offered her my water bag. Fast like lightning, she snatched it from my hand and uncorked it.
“Leave some for tonight,” I warned her. “That’s all we have, and I won’t be able to get more until probably tomorrow morning.”
She stopped drinking and glanced at me with alarm.
“Why not?”
“Water costs money,” I explained.
“Don’t you have money?” Her voice trailed off as she glanced around this pathetic place. Its bare, weathered walls explained my situation better than any words ever could. “But…I don’t understand. You just paid a bucketful of gold for me.”
“And that bucketful was all I had.”
I dropped every single coin I’d managed to save onto that scale, even the queen’s ring that I’d kept through the entire last decade of suffering and hardship.
I’d planned it all carefully, but the risk of my coming out of that auction empty-handed had still been extremely high. It was easy to predict that any humans arriving at Ashgate would be quickly claimed. I knew that competing with someone like Ray or Mazra for Joy Vessels would be difficult if not outright impossible.
I’d decided my best chance to get my hands on a Joy Vessel was to bid on the first one. I figured as they got sold one by one, the bidding would intensify, the prices would rise, and the tempers would heat.
Unwittingly, the Joy Vessel had helped me. Her disrespectful attitude toward Ray had calmed his appetite for her. Otherwise, I doubted he would’ve allowed me to overbid him. Offering everything I owned for her had been a gamble, but I saw my chance, and I went for it, stunning everyone for just long enough for me to claim her.
“You spent everything you had?” She looked shocked.
A huge satchel full of gold might look like a recklessly high amount, but I was certain I got a bargain.
“There are just over thirty Joy Vessels left in the entire kingdom,” I explained. “Most are in the queen’ssarai, heavily guarded and inaccessible even to someone like Ray or Mazra, despite all their power and wealth. There are only six of you in Ashgate. Less than a handful more may still come. But that’s it.There will be no more after that. You, my dear, are priceless, and your weight in gold was a small price to pay compared to what you’re truly worth.”
She swallowed hard, looking tense.
“Okay. So…now what?” She sounded guarded, her shoulders raised, her gaze glued to my face, though she couldn’t possibly see much of me in the shadows of my hood.
She didn’t look repulsed. Was she scared? Definitely. She seemed to be scared every moment of the short time that I’d known her. So much so that I couldn’t even envision her in a relaxed state, as though fear had become one of her attributes and she simply didn’t exist without it.
Her fingers trembled as she raised her hands to her chest. She adjusted her sweater, wrapping it tighter around herself. Her hands missed the ends of the sweater once, twice, until she finally got hold of it and released a shaky breath.
It wasn’t just fear, I realized. The Joy Vessel must be exhausted too. Her journey to Ashgate had been long. And the auction had been trying. Ray had enraged and terrified her. Her fear had spiked into a genuine panic when he’d approached her with that flower, the purpose of which I didn’t know.
The golden hyacinth was used by hags and mages who dared break the law forbidding the handling of the flower. What effect did it have on humans? I had no idea. But I couldn’t think of a better way to stop Ray from punching her than by going ahead with my final bid. It’d been a risk, but it worked. The Joy Vessel was mine, and my new worry had become to keep her.
“Now, you need to rest,” I replied to her question.
I needed some rest too. I’d spend days traveling and searching for ways to borrow gold. I didn’t need much sleep to survive, but I’d been functioning on no sleep at all. The exhaustion had been catching up with me. Yet so much still had to be done. In fact, the real work had just begun. But I allowedmyself to slow down today, just for an hour or two, to celebrate my new fantastic acquisition.
She slumped against the wall. Her shoulders dropped. Her eyelids seemed heavy too. She visibly struggled to keep her eyes open.
