“As you say, as you say.” He bows his head slightly, and his eyes catch my name in the registry. He purses his lips. “You understand what the registration means,” he says. “Once your name is called…”
“I understand,” I say, and move past him to where the other women are waiting.
Darina catches my sleeve.
“Esme, that clerk who left…”
“I know.”
“How long do we have?”
“However long it takes them to cross the city,” I say. “So, pray for traffic.”
We don’t get traffic. The galleries are still filling when, through the wide open doors, my parents walk into the auction hall with four peacekeepers behind them.
My mother has dressed in a hurry and still looks perfect, which is the most impressive thing I’ve ever seen her do. My father doesn’t run. He never runs. He walks the way he votes, slow and certain, while the peacekeepers spread out along the wall. Their heads turn, searching the lines of women.
I find the auctioneer at the foot of the stage steps and hurry toward him.
“Put me up first.”
“Miss Elmsley…”
“First. Now.”
He wipes his neck again.
“Do you know what your name means here? Every buyer in this hall does business in this city, and who decides access and contracts? Your father. You’re not a bride to them, you’re a diplomatic incident.” He lowers his voice. “Go home, child. This isn’t the place for you.”
“Don’t call me child.”
“You don’t want to do this.”
“Don’t tell me what I want.” It comes out louder than I mean it to. People are beginning to stare. “Everyone thinks they can tell me what I can and can’t do. What to wear, when to smile, whom to marry. I’m of age. I registered. I decide what happens with my life now, and if you won’t call my name, I’ll climb up there and start the bidding myself. Would you rather have that?”
He looks at the peacekeepers fanning along the wall, at my father’s measured walk, at the galleries full of watching monsters, and I can see him weighing which scandal will cost him less. My parents haven’t yet spotted me and Darina. We have seconds left.
“All right,” he says, and gestures me up the steps. “I’m only doing my job.” The last words are mostly for himself.
The stage is higher than it looked from the floor. Below me, the hall spreads out in rings of faces, humans at the desks, monsters in the galleries, and when they see me, recognition moves through them fast.
A dragon leans toward his neighbor. An orc says my father’s name, and I hear it clearly from where I’m standing. The ones who don’t know me are told by the ones who do. I watch the gossip travel row by row, and I focus on keeping my back straight and my chin up. I bite the inside of my lip to stop it from trembling.
“Lot one,” the auctioneer calls, and his voice turns smooth and practiced. “The lady is twenty-two years of age, in good health, of…” he hesitates, “…distinguished family. The opening bid stands at one thousand credits.”
He’s priced me at one thousand credits for my name alone, and I understand it isn’t a compliment. It’s an apology aimed at my father. Whatever happens on this stage, that poor man will be running his auctions in another city soon enough.
No paddle moves anywhere in the galleries.
The dragons study their own claws. The transparent creature looks straight at me, and I watch the empty seats through his chest while no one bids. The weremen at the rail talk quietly among themselves.
Nobody in this hall wants to carry Aldric Elmsley’s daughter home over one shoulder and Concord’s fury over the other. My stomach drops.
“One thousand credits,” the auctioneer says again. “Do I hear one thousand?”
There’s a commotion at the edge of the stage. My parents have found me, finally, and I smile knowing it’s too late. There’s a scuffle as guards try to decide whether they’re allowed to touchmy parents and kick them out. Wisely enough, they conclude that they aren’t.
I see my mother’s gloved hands appear on the boards near my feet as she leans in, almost clawing her way up to me.
