Even if I come back alone, even if I stand in that hall and buy no one, at least I’ll be able to say I tried.
Chapter Three
Esme
Darina’s hand is cold in mine, and I can’t tell anymore which of us is shaking.
We move through the servants’ corridor without a lamp, past the laundry room and the racks of pressed linen. I’ve lived in this house for twenty-two years, and I’ve walked this corridor maybe five times. Darina walks it every day. She leads and I follow, which alone would put my mother in an early grave.
I’m carrying a bag, and she carries her own. We only packed what was absolutely necessary.
One of the kitchen girls stands in a doorway with a bread basket against her hip. She looks at Darina, at me, then at the traveling cloak I’ve buttoned over my plainest dress. She steps back to let us pass and says nothing. The servants have always known Darina and I are friends. They’ve kept our secret for years.
“This is madness,” Darina whispers as we step out through a back door. “I want it noted that I said so.”
“Noted,” I whisper back. “Keep walking.”
The gardens are gray in the early morning light. We stay off the raked paths and cross the wet grass to the far wall, behind the old pear trees. There’s a hidden gate here, half-covered in ivy, rusted shut and forgotten. The hinges grate, but they give. We slip through the gap, then we’re practically running, leaving my parents’ estate behind us.
I should be sick with fear. Iamsick with fear. My hands are damp, and my legs don’t feel entirely mine. But under the fear runs a hot, spiteful joy that carries me down the lane faster than Darina can keep up. My parents want to sell me to an old man and call it an alliance. If I’m livestock, then I can walk myself to market and cut out the middlemen. At least I’ll pick the buyer.
The market district lies near the outer rings, in the shadow of the southern gatehouse, and it looks nothing like the Concord I know. There’s no white stone here, and no fountains.
The gatehouse rises out of the city wall with its watch platforms crowded with guards, twice the usual number, and below it, the holding yards are full. Monster delegations stand in penned lines while clerks work down the rows with ledgers and inspection wands. Guards open crates, unroll hide bundles, and confiscate weapons into numbered bins.
Beyond the yards, the doors of the portal chamber stand open, and officials check names before anyone steps through. Every visitor gets logged, searched, and escorted along roped-off roads toward the auction hall.
Concord calls this diplomacy. Up close, it looks like what it is, which is a city so frightened of its guests that it counts their teeth. I suppose this is why most bride markets are held outside the cities – to avoid the chaos and bureaucracy.
Darina presses against my side.
“They’re searching them,” she says.
“They check everyone.”
“They’re not checking us like that.”
“Because no one is afraid of humans. Why would they be?” I almost laugh at my own words, and I hate myself a little for it.
The brides’ registration desks stand inside the hall doors. A line of women waits ahead of us. Some are poor, some are desperate, some hold themselves stiff and won’t look at anyone. In the galleries above, the buyers are already taking their seats. I see two dragons holding half of their human shape – horns, scaled forearms, and folded wings. I see orcs, weremen, a giant hunched under the ceiling. I see shadow beings that hurt to look at, and one tall creature whose body has a transparent quality to it, so that I can see the seats behind him through his chest. The women in line keep their eyes down. The monsters don’t.
When it’s my turn, the clerk doesn’t look up.
“Name?”
I think about lying. The thought lasts about two seconds, because there are at least four members of staff within earshot who’ve served canapés in my mother’s garden.
“Esme Elmsley,” I say.
His pen stops. He looks up, eyebrows raised, then his gaze moves past me. Another clerk is already sliding off her stool and walking fast toward the doors. There it goes, then. Someone will be at my father’s gate before I’m even on the stage.
I grab a pen and sign the registry in my best drawing-room hand.
A man comes toward us from the stage side, middle-aged, dressed in good clothes, dabbing at his neck with a folded cloth. The auctioneer himself has come down for me. I’m flattered.
“Miss Elmsley.” He says my name carefully, and very quietly. He looks at Darina, standing close behind my shoulder. “Oh, I see. You’re entering your servant for auction?”
“No.” It comes out sharp enough that heads turn. “Never. She’s my companion, and she’s not for sale. Don’t even think about auctioning her off.”
