At Night the Moon Can Guide Me

The thaw that touched the ground had not yet reached up to the air above it, leaving even these first days of spring bitter and thin. In the cold of the “dressing room”- as Roland called it- Aya's breath slipped from her lips like a ghost. She studied herself intently, brushing her ruby hair in one of the mirrors available. The others in the small room were primping and preening in a similar fashion, teeth chattering ferociously in their states of undress. Roland had claimed she needed to “play to her strengths” to ensure a quality buyer with the insistence of a practiced slaver. And so, after much cajoling, she was talked into her auction gown: a shimmering emerald number, tied with a single knot behind the neck. Her back fully exposed, the neckline lower than low, two slits in the long skirt terminating only at the hip- to Aya's gaze, it verged on absurdity.

Despite her vague feeling of insult, she reluctantly admitted that Roland had a certain flair for advertising. She smiled and blew a kiss into the mirror- then looked around to make sure no one had seen it.

They hadn't, too focused on their preparations or merely huddling discontentedly against the cold. Sara, a small, chipper blonde, was staring over her shoulder at herself in the mirror. Jonah, a huge, tanned man with strange geometric tattoos on his back seemed to barely consider himself, lost in his thoughts; he sought to strike out north with the proceeds of his own sale. A half dozen others stamped their feet and rubbed their hands together in a futile attempt to drive the chill out. The cold, while numbing and bleak, had the fortunate effect of concealing anxiety: any shivering or expression of discomfort could be blamed on the frosty air. Over the past week or so, as the date of the auction drew nearer, a tacit agreement seemed to arise amongst the group to not display their fear and uncertainty, or to collectively pretend that they were confident in a choice they had made, rather than one that had been made for them by circumstance. Even now, gazes caught between them through mirrors were answered with thin, tight-lipped smiles. They did not speak.

The monastic environment of the dressing room was eventually disrupted by Roland announcing his arrival with the crash of the door. “Ladies and gentlemen! You have five more minutes! Make your final adjustments now! This is your moment!” Roland stalked the room, straightening collars and cutting loose threads with a dagger that seemed to disappear and reappear on his belt almost without motion. He peered closely at the face of a pale human girl- Julia, Aya thought her name might be- who had arrived only a few days prior. “You need more color. Talk to Sasha when you're done in here. You from the south? Not used to the cold, eh? She'll get you sorted out.” Roland turned his attention to another of the group without waiting for a response- as usual, all his questions were rhetorical. “Xavier, God, the SHOES, you talk to Sasha too, there has to be a better option than that.” Again, he walked off, eyes flickering birdlike, briefly speaking to Aya as he passed. “Aya, you stay after this group is done, I want to talk to you. Four minutes, everyone! We've got two more groups after you, we're not extending your time! My God, Penelope! Who told you that was your color? Me? Well I was clearly drunk!”

In that handful of minutes, Roland made another two dozen criticisms, corrections, suggestions, and exclamations before the group shuffled out of the room, leaving the pair alone. But for Sara waving meekly over her shoulder on the way out, none of them even acknowledged Aya. As the door swung shut with its final departure, Aya struck first, leaning against a cold wall. “Roland. You're making the next group wait.”

“They can wait! Come on, give an old man a moment.”

“A moment for what?” Aya asked. “I don't think my tits can get any more out than they already are, Roland.”

“Not that, not that,” he said, waving his hand dismissively. “How are the girls?”

The hostility in Aya's face stilled, but her lips stayed tight. “They're doing fine. Fed. Warm.” She narrowed her eyes slightly. “Why? Have you heard differently?”

Roland shook his head. “No, no, and I'm making sure you didn't either. I'm glad.”

Aya looked at him sharply. “I'm sure you are. And now you get to collect. And hopefully make back your... investment? Maybe that's the polite word for it. I prefer that to 'advance.'”

“I had you stay so I could give you some advice.”

“What, to drive up my price? You'll recoup, Roland. A good cow up on the auction block would make that back. You'll be fine, and then some.”

“Aya.” Her name in his voice sounded like a boot seating itself in gravel. “You can turn me away if you want. In half an hour, you won't be my problem anymore. But you won't have me anymore, either. What's about to happen is going to dictate the next year of your life. That might not be a lot for an elf, but it’s not nothing.” Roland paused, softening slightly. “But I can tell you what I've seen. The girls that do well. The girls that don't. Take it from an old man: it's always a gamble, but sometimes you can load the dice a little.”

She resented it, wanted to dismiss him, to roll her eyes at a man who would suggest the best manner in which to be sold, but her shoulders relaxed with a gray sigh. “Okay. Talk to me.”

Roland sat on one of the low wooden benches ringing the room and patted next to him to invite her. His voice settled into a rhythmic pocket. “From the moment you're on stage to the moment you're sold to one year more, you're performing. You're not just a product that gets sold- you're a product that sells itself. You're not waiting around to get chosen, you’re doing the choosing.” His cadence like coins tumbling loosely against one another in a pocket stirred by a searching hand. “Bidding starts low. Buyers jump on just in case. Work the stage. The more activity, the better for you. That's when you start looking. The cheap ones will thin out. That's fine. There's gonna be a handful who are serious, and that's who you're looking for. You won't have a lot of time.”

Roland picked up speed, eyes flickering across an imagined audience, like this conversation was part of his own preparatory ritual. “Noble if you can, merchant if you can't, and if it's a merchant don't go for the richest looking one. At your age, you've been around the block, so-”

Aya bristled at that one, interrupting him: “Forty is not the same for us as it is for you-”

“Be that as it may,” Roland continued, “you should know better than most of them. Pick the one you want. Get out there and take a good look, find one you can stomach spending a year with all right. Play to him. If you do it right, he'll have the money for you, even if he has to give up every crown in his pocket.”

“And so I get the privilege of a penniless master.”

“No, you get the privilege of an invested one.”

“One who wants to get his money's worth.”

“One who doesn't see you as disposable.” Roland looked at her and with the echo of the stone around them it seemed his voice had multiplied, as though a chorus pleaded for her consideration. “You don't want to be cheap, Aya. You don't want to be a typical purchase. You want to be something special. Something to take care of. You're an object. But some are more precious than others.”

Roland rose to his feet with a grunt and put a gentle hand on Aya's shoulder. “Take a few. Collect yourself. I'll send in the next group in five minutes.” He left and Aya sat and thought and after a few minutes rose herself. Looking down, adjusting her dress, she saw the spot on the rough stone floor where Roland's feet had rested as he sat. It was perfectly smooth.

~

While the unseasonable cold lashed against the carnival atmosphere, it was not enough to dissuade the throngs from Marika's first true market day of the year. Tents and stalls shuttered for the hard, cold winter opened again even as icy fingers scrabbled for purchase. Peasants, nobles, soldiers, and slaves alike shuffled across the slushy cobblestones, parting way for the occasional guard on horseback to pass through, inspecting gloves and knives and fruits from the south. The plume of smoke from the combined fires roasting chickens and frying corn cakes in lard hung heavy and spiced in the air, thin traces of it disappearing soundlessly or skimming across the scaled facades of old elven architecture. Men laughed and ate and drank and women giggled and gossiped and shopped and thieves and whores looked to those men and women to ply their trades and the guards watched them in turn to ply their own. Green and silver banners torn from their posts by sudden gusts of northern wind lay trampled in dirty half-snow, slowly torn and buried under the weight of incessant boots and hooves. The streets breathed. The city, gasping, resurrected.

Roland looked out across the square, arm wrapped around a pole supporting the tent above the stage, a last minute addition after last night's assembly when the overcast sky threatened a frigid rain. The front of the stage had filled out early, a motley arrangement of benches and seats scattered about which would be forgotten the moment the auction began. If not the centerpiece of the day's festivities, it was certainly a primary draw; the slave auction was itself a spectator event, and the other shop owners were all too happy for Roland to drive traffic through their offices. The vast majority of observers would be just that, only there for the show. Dotted among the peasantry, though, were those with coin and credit and intent. While the local farmers and tradesmen gathered in tight circles, spitting into the mud and telling lewd jokes, pointing at the slaves huddled at the back of the tent, the nobles and merchants and other such patrons observed those same men and women quietly, an early weeding-out process to fit their own tastes. Much of this early decision making would be forgotten in the frenzy of the trade; Roland knew that what a man walked in for was rarely what he walked out with.

“We're on in twenty. Here's the running order.” Roland turned to Sasha, a leggy blonde elf with small glasses that seemed to magnify her eyes. He glanced at the sheet of paper she held toward him. “Push Julia to the middle. Other than that, it looks good.” Sasha took the paper back, scratching in the adjustment, then stepped forward and leaned against the same pole Roland occupied. “You sure?” she asked. “Usually you've got more advice to give than that.”

Roland rubbed at his eyes, blinking away his exhaustion, running on minimal sleep for the past few nights, putting out last minute fires and making arrangements for today's showing. “I'm getting there, I think.”

“Getting where?”

“Old.”

Sasha laughed softly, ruffling Roland's hair- what remained of it, anyway. “I think you've been there for a while.”

Roland shrugged. “The other kind. Tired. James can take over any time. He's been ready for years. And he'll do well. Probably better than I did. He has more patience than I ever had at that age.”

Sasha's hand found his, intertwining their fingers. “We've done well.”

Roland looked over his shoulder at the slaves huddled for warmth in the back of the tent. “We’ve done something.” He peered out into the distance, murmuring, “Can't be.” He loosed his hand from Sasha's. “Give me a moment. I'll be back in time.” He walked, hopped off the low stage, wincing at his knees, and weaved through the crowd.

~

A thin, glacial drizzle of thaw runoff ran onto Kai's shoulder from the awning above. Held hostage by the crowd that had jostled him into the line of fire, he could do little more than adopt an expression of what he hoped was stoic dispassion- an effect unlikely to survive his hissed exclamation. “God, shit, fuck!” It was, of course, only as the trickle ceased that his path forward opened, cold water working its way down into his cloak. Pulling at the fabric, trying to shake some of the droplets from it, he heard the call. “Seigneur! Seigneur Umber! Seigneur!” Kai closed his eyes momentarily, steeling himself, before turning to the pudgy red-faced man accosting him. “Roland,” he sighed, “a pleasure as always.”

“Oh no,” exclaimed Roland, squeezing his way through pedestrians to arrive in front of Kai with an obsequious, affected bow, “not at all, the pleasure is eternally and inevitably my own. What brings you into the city today, my lord?” Some passers-by were starting to look back at the pair now, and Kai shot him a silencing glare which proved ineffective. “It's so unusual to see you on a market day, Seigneur Umber!”

Kai grabbed Roland by the elbow and tugged him in. “Roland, I don't know what the fuck you think you're doing-” but Roland only laughed. “Be easy, Kai. I'm only teasing. What are you doing here? The man I know wouldn't suffer these crowds unless on the duke's orders. Come on, take a moment to gossip. Look around. You're not getting anywhere in this.”

Kai eyed the crowd around him, the peasants now studiously avoiding his gaze. “Yes, Roland. I'm on court business.” He clenched his teeth. “My lord said it was urgent that I come to the city at once. To have my copy of a grain tax bill resealed. With the duke's new seal. Because the old one was insufficiently stately.” Molars ground and neck muscles tensed. “So yes, Roland, this is out of the ordinary for me. Now if you'll be so kind, I will take my insufficiently stately grain tax bill and- no. No. No no no. Oh no.” Kai reached inside his coat pocket and pulled out a largely melted scroll, the thin royal paper drenched in rainwater, nearly illegible. He breathed, held in for a moment, and exhaled a shuddering hiss through his teeth. “It didn’t even pass. It was a failed proposal.”

Roland stopped short of a laugh, only a single loud bark escaping before he regained control. “A most unfortunate turn of events, my lord!”

“I need you to not say anything right now.”

“Nonsense, my lord! We can make a copy in the workshop!”

Kai glared. “This needs to be notarized. It's a state document. I'm not passing a note to a girl I'm courting.”

“And we have a notary,” Roland replied. “As I'm sure you know, our spring auction is today, and as such we have all the necessary administrative and legal capability to take care of it!” He dropped the act for a moment. “We're processing bills of sale and legal documents all day today. I'll have my people draft and notarize a copy. It won't take long.”

“I can take care of it with the clerk.”

“And let the duke know that you let a state document come to destruction? And besides, why wait in the office when you can, perhaps, do some window shopping-

Kai groaned. “God, Roland, is this a sales pitch or a favor?”

“Why can't it be both? It'll take some time to draft your precious failed grain tax bill, giving you ample time to consider the potential benefits a lovely lady could bring to your home. And, in fact, I have some ladies of many particular qualities which may, indeed, be of more interest to a man of your particular taste, and-”

“What are you trying to imply, exactly?”

Roland leaned in conspiratorially. “Come to the auction. I think we may have something you’re looking for.”

“I'm not looking for anything. I'm looking for a fucking grain tax bill.”

“And you'll get it! Come on, come with me,” he said, grabbing Kai's arm. Roland's voice drifted into a pattering drone as Kai reluctantly followed behind him.

~

Aya caught Roland's strange departure from the stage but had little time to consider it. The spring auction was supposed to be the smallest of the four per year (Roland said the auction immediately preceding winter was the largest- buyers wanted someone to huddle inside with for the season) but from Aya's perspective it couldn't get much bigger. The square in front of the stage was as densely packed with bodies as the streets beyond it, leering, shouting offers, begging, insulting, a vast buzz of human and elven noise. Surrounding her was a swarm of activity from various contractors of Roland's for the event: girls touching up make-up, laborers moving supplies in the workshop tent, various assistants consulting one another on logistical concerns, with Sasha as the sun they orbited. The blonde elf had a remarkable poise given the flurry around her, well seasoned in the rhythm of these events. She caught Aya's gaze and responded with a smile, rapid Elvish shouted over the din: “{You have a good position today! You're the only alamdar in the group! You're expensive!}”

Aya took a moment to process before responding; Sasha's Elvish was heavily accented from somewhere to the south. “{Is that worth so much to these people?}”

Sasha replied. “{Not to all of them. But when there's only one of us, she gets to be queen.}” Sasha tugged tightly on the laces of the corset on the brunette she was adjusting, tying them off in a neat bow automatically before sending the woman on her way. She approached Aya, stood beside her, and looked out into the steadily growing crowd. “{Roland spoke to you, yes?}”

“{Yes, he spoke to me. He was very kind.}”

Sasha smiled. “{He is kind and he wants to make money. He sees selling an alamdar of forty turns as a challenge. And yet he goes to bed with an alamdar of eighty turns every night.}” She shrugged. “{Men are very stupid.}”

Aya burst into a fit of giggles before catching the eye of the crowd again and falling silent. The two stood there looking across the horde, mostly men, mostly human, mostly poor, spitting, laughing, slugging from cheap bottles of local wine or cheaper bottles of mead, eyes slow, hungry, angry. There were guards. Not enough.

 “{Tell me I'll be okay,}” Aya said.

“{You'll be okay. I've seen you. You're tougher than a fat merchant.}”

Aya smiled. “I hope so.”

Sasha opened her mouth to continue but instead looked toward the side of the crowd curiously and Aya followed her gaze. Roland had returned with company in tow. A man in a black cloak and plain clothes- not the farmers’ rough hewn tunics and breeches, but common stock from the city. Handsome enough, at least from a distance, but with eyes set in a glower, shoulders hunched like a man walking into the wind. Roland waved Sasha over.

“Who’s that?” Aya asked.

Sasha spoke slowly, as though unsure herself. “A friend. It’s strange to see him here though. I’ll be back.”

Sasha descended the short set of stairs at the side of the stage. The man in black waved as she approached and then looked past her to Aya and stopped, hand still in the air, until Sasha pressed gently at his side, half-pushing him into the workshop tent. Aya furrowed her brow, puzzled, looking down to make certain her dress still succeeded in covering what little it meant to, then looked back out into the crowd. An impromptu wrestling match had begun between some drunks toward the back. A guard watched but made no move. Children threw loose lumps of dirty snow at one another. A man with dried sausages wrapped in wax paper moved through the crowd to sell. Bodies cloaked in blacks and browns and grays undulated shaking boots free of slush. Men shouted and she looked away.

The trio exited the workshop tent and split with the man in black heading toward the crowd and Roland and Sasha coming up the stairs, the elf gesticulating dramatically to him as he waved a hand dismissively. Sasha spoke quickly to a few slaves and then approached Aya. “You’re going last now in group two. You understand? Last in the second line.”

Aya nodded automatically, opening her mouth to ask why her spot was changing, but Sasha had already moved on, talking to Roland again, handing him the roster sheet before stepping over to the groups of slaves to shepherd them into order. Lines formed hesitantly and confusedly, Sasha gently pushing and pulling men and women into their places while Aya idled toward the back, waiting for her column to form, and fell in at the end of it. From here, her view of the crowd was occluded by the seven bodies ahead of her and she was thankful and also suddenly more anxious. Through the gaps of the rows she could see Sasha walk up to Roland, speak to him briefly, offer her cheek for a kiss, and step back as Roland headed to the front of the stage, arms and eyes wide and inviting, to him, to him.

“Ladies and gentlemen! I am so, so thankful to all of you for your attendance on this most splendid of spring days! I am, as always, your humble host, auctioneer, and master of ceremonies Roland Heisman, and I am proud to say that today’s stock is one of the finest rosters we’ve ever assembled!” Roland stalked the stage as he had in the dressing room, leaning toward the crowd, hands out, beseeching. “All of you today have the opportunity, no, the privilege to bid on our lovely creatures! We have gathered the finest men and women of all shapes and sizes and talents to suit any buyer! And I say any! I do not believe that there is a man here who will look upon our offerings today with anything less than admiration!” A peal of laughter rose up from the crowd but it did not dissuade Roland in the slightest, the fire of the sale lit in his belly. “To you, and you, and you- Marika- let us celebrate the end of winter with new friends!” And he raised his arms and Aya could hear the crowd roar and she shrank down lower.

“Without further ado, let us commence!” Another raucous cheer rose from the crowd and Aya looked to her left and right for someone she knew but saw only an anonymous man and woman shivering and miserable. Roland continued. “Let’s start with a veteran of my enterprise: the lovely Helena Broderick! Her fifth time on our stage, ladies and gentlemen, a real springtime classic!” A statuesque, frosty blond in a shimmering silver dress was first in line, and she walked forward, gave Roland a dainty kiss on the cheek, and stood at the front of the stage, her smile patronizing but dazzling enough to inspire howls of approval from the men in the front. Aya had seen her arrive earlier, barely before the auction. Sasha removed a thin silver collar from the woman’s neck and she walked on stage. One contract over, another to begin.

“Helena is an accomplished homemaker, seamstress, and cook, among many, many other talents.” Roland allowed just a trace of lascivious implication to enter his voice and the crowd howled again. “The bidding for the lovely Helena will begin at two thousand crowns. Do I have- Count Samuel for twenty-five- Count Frederick for twenty-six!” Bids stacked too quickly to properly call, Roland interrupting himself repeatedly as the numbers ran up. There wasn’t a chorus of voices- it was five or six men in fierce competition with one another, all noble from the sound of their accents, large bids acting as attacks on competitors, hoping to dissuade them from matching, but the number kept climbing and Aya couldn’t keep up. Slowly, voices began to dwindle, until only Roland called out. “Count Frederick with high bid, would anyone like to challenge? One! Two!” And with a stomp of his booted heel against the boards of the stage, “Sold! Helena is the property of Count Frederick for the term of one year for the sum of thirteen thousand six hundred crowns! A new record for Helena on our stage! Everyone, please, give our lovely woman a round of applause for starting our event!” Helena curtseyed graciously and moved to the side, down the stairs, toward the workshop tent. Aya’s blood went hot and she heard a ringing in her ears and her stomach vaulted toward her feet.

Five hundred crowns. Five hundred fucking crowns was what Roland had offered her and what she took. It was that up front or forty percent of her final sale price throughout her term and Roland had insisted that at her age the flat fee was the better bet. Five hundred fucking crowns for Aisha and Fatima to live off, enough for six months, generously. To keep her sisters off the street when the foundry failed after a contract that had run like clockwork for a decade was cancelled without so much as an apology. Utterly overleveraged on the surest of things. And like ants carrying off a grasshopper’s corpse the guild pounced on the foundry and the ore and the tools and nearly the home had Aya not come to Roland in desperation. She wanted to cry and vomit and scream but she closed her eyes and ground her teeth and then Roland was bringing a new man on stage.

The number continued to reverberate in her head five hundred as Roland proceeded through the rest of the row. Another man sold for nearly eleven thousand, not five hundred. Another at nearly twelve. A couple more at exorbitant prices- likely the last of Roland’s “veterans”- before numbers started to float five hundred down into worldly territory. A woman at eight thousand and another at seven, still not five hundred but marginally more bearable, slightly less nauseating than Helena’s insane price. But each number felt like a blow varying in viciousness through its size, and the slowly lowering figures felt more like an assailant exhausting himself rather than an act of mercy.

As the last slave in the first line stepped to the front of the stage, Sasha walked down the second line, making meaningless adjustments until arriving at Aya in the back. She leaned in. “<<The man who came with Roland, he will want you. You can make your choice. But he is a good man.>>” Before Aya could respond with demands for restitution, Sasha was off again and the second line had started moving, the first in order stepping onto the stage. Aya dimly noted that it was Jonah, the quiet, enormous man she would occasionally speak with in the weeks leading up to the auction. There was some clamor- a massive starting bid of five thousand crowns against his one thousand opening offer, then a jabbering of a strange, guttural language that Aya could not identify. Jonah was sold with one bid, and Aya could barely see him leaning over the stage, speaking to someone for a moment until Sasha had to usher him off.

The rest of the line proceeded without interruption and as Aya approached her turn she could see more and more. A few places ahead of her, Julia was sold for three thousand eight hundred. Had Aya taken the percentage deal, it would be heartening. As it stood, it was another wound. Five hundred. More of the crowd revealed itself, growing steadily drunker and more belligerent as the evening continued. The sun was setting directly in front of the stage like an enormous spotlight upon the chattel, red and malevolent in its stillness and symmetry. More guards- still not enough, some on horseback, still not enough- looked nervous and agitated. The crowd spilled backward into the street where still more craned their necks for a glimpse at the bacchanal. She barely noticed when the last body in front of her moved onto the stage until the light of that hideous sun struck her uncovered face. It was time.

“Our final item for sale in our second lot, and our only elf on offer today, is the one and only Aya Darisa!” Aya did not have a surname as such, and explaining that a clan name was not an equivalent fell on deaf ears. “A lovely woman of forty winters, but don’t let that fool you: she’s as vivacious and charming as a lady half her age!” Aya gritted her teeth. “She is talented in herbalism, a proud disciple of elven magic, and a brilliant cook, but for the sake of honesty, it is only fair to admit that surely her beauty is the greatest of all her many virtues!”

Aya had grown some herbs for a couple summers and Roland made her a chemist. She knew some basic charms, mostly for metallurgy, and Roland made her a witch. She could make soup and bake bread and Roland made her a chef. The once-amusing lies Roland had concocted to make her more marketable now boiled her blood.

She walked forward and as she passed Roland he grabbed her wrist. She turned into him and spoke first.

“Five fucking hundred-”

“Stop. Take my advice from earlier. Take it.” He let her go and continued his patter and Aya looked at him in amazement at his gall before turning back to the crowd. Drunk and stinking and broken-toothed men waved for her attention, shouted at her, called her a knife-ear whore, demanded she show her tits, open her mouth, lift her dress. One at the front grabbed for her ankle and she stepped back and a guard delivered an uppercut with a mailed fist that felled the man and knocked a molar loose from his jaw which tumbled onto the stage. She looked at it and bent over slightly, overcome by the insane impulse to pick it up which she halted before it could be realized. And she looked up and she saw him.

Years later, when recounting the story, Aya would attempt to articulate the flow of time in that moment which she had not experienced prior or since. She would say that the bidding lasted thousands of years and that it was also over immediately. And every permutation and pace that could occur between those two, each tempo of experience stacking upon the next with a crushing weight, and Aya would say it was as though she had experienced it many times before and that each one was a necessary thread in the final tapestry. She would then laugh and dismiss it as part of the excitement and fear of the moment but within herself she believed that at the auction she had chosen something or something had been chosen for her. She could remember with absolute clarity dozens if not hundreds of visions of events which did not occur. There was grace.

“Bidding will start at five hundred crowns! Do I see five hundred?”

A surge of activity and a frenzy of bidding, the crowd writhing serpentine, poor men jumping on the low bid, knowing they would be bested but eager to tell the story at the tavern later, that they had almost had that fat titted knife-ear at the auction, Roland’s voice like a stone skipping, restarting, “Five- six- eight- one- twelve,” the man in black nearly bowled over by men pushing their way forward, Aya forgetting every word Roland had told her in the dressing room. There was no playing to the crowd, so insensate and drunk and cold and wet they merely shouted and scuffled, most incoherent either from the slur to their speech or its concealment in the sheer grinding noise. A man nearly falling over at the front of the stage bellowing “Ten thousand crowns for the red cunt” before a guard dragged him away. Bidding continuing reckless spiralling amongst tattered grey snow-licked coats and brown-stained grins slavering slack and putrid, five thousand rolling abruptly into six, slowing infinitesimally, Roland able to at least announce numbers in full before the next bid arrived.

The man in black regained his footing, pushing closer to the stage, within five rows, looking up at the woman with her arms clasped at her chest, seemingly frozen. He craned his neck around, trying to identify the other bidders, then looked at Roland who seemed nearly as dazed as Aya, desperately attempting to keep track of who was currently in the lead. Eight thousand and things were flagging slightly, with fewer voices but a similar aggression in bids. Eighty-five hundred, then a short pause, as though each participant expected another to continue the dance, and Kai raised his hand and yelled. “Eighty-six!”

Aya’s eyes snapped to him and her mouth opened slightly before her eyes darted across the crowd as more bids came in, eighty-eight then nine, then the man in black again with ninety-one, far more than five hundred fucking crowns, the field thinning further, two handfuls of voices now. A drunk at the edge of the crowd stood pissing, staggering in place before slumping to the ground. Ninety-three to an elf in silver armor standing on a bench for a better view, two blue jays quarreled in the air above the stage, ninety-four to the man in black again, his gaze pleading to Roland, gesturing faintly at his side with a cutting motion, Roland responding with a circular, rolling gesture, and Aya did not understand, but then there was ninety-five and ninety-eight in rapid succession, and the man in black roared “Ten thousand crowns!” Another pause at this new milestone reached, and Roland yelled over the din. “Ten thousand crowns to the wolf of Sumyr! Will anyone challenge?” Aya did not know what the title meant but dimly Sumyr brought cold and smoke to mind.

The silvered elf bid ten thousand two hundred and the man in black countered with ten thousand four hundred and the elf waved his arm with a look of disgust. Roland began. “Ten thousand four-”

“Ten six!” Another loud, clear voice heard earlier returned belonging to a long-haired nobleman in a silk waistcoat and a jacket with gold epaulettes and Aya could see the man in black snap his head to the side and find the nobleman immediately. He responded. “Ten eight!” The nobleman searched the crowd for a moment and located the man. “Seigneur Kai! A pleasure! Eleven!”

The man in black- Seigneur Kai- did not wait. “Eleven two, Count Samuel, the pleasure is mine.”

A race of sudden, clipped bids and it was suddenly a thousand more, Aya was at over twelve thousand crowns (not five hundred) and it was climbing between these two nobles who chattered between bids with barely concealed contempt. “Very invested today, Seigneur Kai! Twelve five! I never knew you to be a buyer!”

“Twelve seven. A special occasion today, my lord.”

“Thirteen. And I’m sure she’s eager to go home with the wolf!” There was a murmuring and curses from the crowd and Kai did not have his sword but he had his dagger and he calculated if he could slip through the crowd-

“Thirteen two. You seem as invested as I, my lord.”

Count Samuel smiled. “Only for the sake of novelty, Seigneur Kai. Thirteen five. We have not all tasted the fruits of the north.”

Kai stilled, and Roland, and much of the crowd, driven back to shouts tense and barking, the men turning to Count Samuel and staring balefully, and Kai looked at her. And Aya thought about the five hundred fucking crowns and she looked at Roland, aflame with black hate, and she thought of every lie and the cold and Mashaat and the rat traps, and she turned to Count Samuel and thought about the price of his coat and the price of rice and oil for the girls. And her price.

She looked at Roland again, Sasha, the crowd of drunken roiling hating wanting men, and then she turned to him and saw him. And his hood was down and his arms were at his sides flared slightly with his palms facing her in supplication and he mouthed the word “please” to her.

And she looked at the nobleman with the epaulettes and at Roland and Sasha and the lake of angry, hungry men. And she looked back at Kai and she mirrored his gesture, her palms facing him, and she nodded frantically and she spoke the word. “Yes.” And before her mouth could close again he shouted. “Thirteen seven!”

Roland began almost cautiously. “Thirteen thousand seven hundred crowns to the wolf! Does anyone challenge?” A pause. “Going once!”

Count Samuel smiled and looked at Aya. And he turned back toward the street and walked.

“Going twice!”

Aya returned her gaze to Seigneur Kai and her hands flew to her mouth and she blushed like a girl again. His hands were fists at his sides and he did not break his gaze from the woman for fear that to do so would invite sorrow.

Roland roared with a stomp that cracked the board underneath his heel: “Sold! Sold to Seigneur Kai Umber, the wolf of Sumyr-” but the rest was lost in the eruption of the crowd, screaming, bottles flying through the air, anonymous men practically tackling Seigneur Kai, grabbing his head, screaming congratulations, pounding on his back, other ululations of triumph cast through the air in the dimming light of the sunset, the star’s odious bulk finally descending to leave Marika to its vices and virtues, even Roland shouting ecstatically, celebration uncontainable, trash and snow and rocks heaved across and into the crowd, guards pulled between outbreaks of fights among farmers and masons and factory workers, drunks laying snoring in the melting snow, the pissing man waking from his reverie confused at the commotion, the blue jays returning to further spar, and amidst it all Aya saw Seigneur Kai and he saw her and she was his, she was his.