‘Your lot will go under the hammer at 10:25,’ our usher informed us. ‘Make sure she’s ready, please, and has all her accessories.’
I thanked the nice boggan, taking a moment to commit his face to memory. Someday I’d kill this one.
My smile gave none of this away, however, except perhaps to Phélan, who knew me far too well. His own smile went a little crooked when it landed on me.
I know, I know, I signalled with my eyes. Work first, play later.
We were attracting some attention — or rather, Fionn was. She walked slowly into the fray, head held high, eyes blank, and I walked behind her with my arms full of Narasel’s sealskin and a bracelet of pearls on my arm that would pass for Fionn’s anywhere. Heads turned to get a good look at her. One or two people recognised her; I heard her name repeated a few times, in shocked tones.
Someone put out a hand to stop me.
Paulan.
‘That’s your “supply”?’ he asked, nodding at Fi.
‘Quite a prize, no?’ I smiled.
He nodded. ‘She’ll fetch a bit.’ His manner was civil, even friendly. I couldn’t tell what he thought of my showing up here with a slave to sell; whether he approved or not.
Then again, he was supporting Drevan’s leadership claims, and Drevan seemed to be running this little show. I reminded myself not to like Paulan too much.
‘We expect to do fabulously well,’ I told Paulan with a wink. I watched him clock that word, “we”, and look at Phélan. Reminding him of my influence, of who had the power here. He got the hint, touched his hat, received a nod from Phélan in return.
‘Anything I should know?’ I asked of Paulan, leaning nearer, and speaking low. Paulan had a table to himself, thus far; wherever Drevan was, or the rest of his men, I couldn’t guess, but Paulan was probably parked here to observe, and keep the peace.
‘You got your time slot?’ he replied.
‘Just now.’
‘Keep to it. Tight schedule tonight.’
I raised an eyebrow, looked a question, but Paulan didn’t go for it. ‘Bold move,’ he said instead, nodding towards Fionn. She stood a few feet away, still and silent, while a couple of auction-goers touched her hair, her gown, and inspected every part of her. Nothing showed on her face at all. Nothing.
‘Rest of the goods are locked up,’ Paulan elaborated. ‘And the girls don’t show until it’s time.’
Meaning, Phélan and I were openly parading around with both “girl” and accessories, showing them off, while everyone else had taken the precaution of keeping the sealskins and pearls under guard somewhere, and their former owners, too. We’d more or less known that. Fionn’s factory-pearls had remained quiet for the past twenty-four hours, so we knew the other selkies weren’t being kept on the premises ahead of the auction.
‘No harm in drumming up a little interest in advance, right?’ I answered, and nodded towards Fionn. ‘I’d say it’s working like a charm.’
Paulan gave me an assessing look, and Phélan. It was a bold move on our part: we were as much as saying that we feared nothing and no one in this place, that we expected no interference with our merchandise that might put it — or us — at risk.
This is partly why I’d needed Phélan. If I’d shown up alone with Fi in tow, I’d be seen as a dilettante, a role I’d already adopted for Drevan’s benefit. With Phélan at my back, we made a decent show of strength. Thetai Sarra Antha might be new to the selkie-trade, but she wasn’t weak and she wasn’t unconnected.
I saw most of this register in Paulan’s eyes, though with a shade of something else I couldn’t place. I hoped we hadn’t made a misstep.
‘Better put her somewhere out of sight for now,’ Paulan recommended. ‘Show’s about to start.’
‘Wouldn’t be polite to upstage the competition,’ I grinned. I took hold of Fionn’s arm and towed her away, over to a more or less empty corner.
‘If you could do that cool shadow trick,’ I asked Phélan. ‘That’d be handy.’
‘Can’t. Too much light in here.’
‘You can’t make a bit more shadow?’
He looked vaguely annoyed. ‘Not how that works.’
‘All you can do is, what, pull it about a bit.’
‘Something like that. Why don’t you sit still for a bit and don’t talk, Tai, that ought to be enough.’
‘You’re doing enough not talking for the both of us,’ I retorted, but he wasn’t wrong. I parked Fionn against the wall, giving her arm a brief, supportive squeeze before I released it. I couldn’t know what this charade was costing her, but I knew the answer was somewhere in the region of way too fucking much. I’d have to make it up to her somehow. Someday.
‘Is that annoying you?’ Phélan said, standing with his back to the wall, arms folded. ‘Good.’
‘Not really annoying,’ I said, taking up a station on Fi’s other side, and turning to watch the room. ‘It’s just unlike you.’
‘Missing my silver tongue?’
‘Awfully.’
Phélan smiled, faintly, and turned away his head.
‘It’s true,’ I said. ‘I actually am.’
This went unanswered, for the auction was palpably about to begin. They’d done a decent job of this space, whoever had been in charge of setting it up. Wisps clustered thickly under the high ceiling, their pallid glow casting the shadows out. The great stone blocks of the walls were festooned with grime and cobwebs, but the effect was not unpleasing under that flickering light; a certain gothic chic, one might say. Someone had hauled in a lot of tables and chairs, cheap plastic numbers no doubt, but covered in brocade cloth and with a wisp-light apiece, they contrived to be charming.
The front of the room was given over to a staging area, with a podium. A woman stood at the latter, dressed in a glittering black gown, her mane of dark hair lit with jewels. My heart stopped for a moment, expecting either Brianne or — impossibly — Silise, but this woman was neither. I didn’t know her face.
‘Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to tonight’s auction,’ she was saying in a low, resonant voice. I stiffened a bit, recognising some quality of the tone.
‘What?’ Phélan murmured to me. ‘Someone you know.’
‘No. Siren, though.’
‘Ah.’ He nodded. ‘Great for crowd control.’
I had to smirk. He was right; if this crowd of criminals got too rowdy, it wouldn’t hurt to have a siren as mistress of ceremonies. Smart move.
I let the rest of her words wash over me, not paying too much attention. The usual pleasantries: introductions; thanks for attendance; explanation as to the functioning of the auction, for those inexperienced. I was watching for the appearance of the first selkie. In fact, questions had been blossoming in my mind for the past ten minutes, thick and fast, and I cursed my inability to consult with Fionn. If the show was starting, where was the merchandise? Had they entered the building yet? If they had, Fionn might know; her pearls might differentiate fellow selkies from among the mess of other people arriving. But I couldn’t know, and I couldn’t ask Fi either. She certainly hadn’t given anything away.
The mistress of ceremonies made a show of checking an elegant pocket-watch, worn around her neck on a silver chain. As she did so, the haunting notes of a great bell began to chime the hour: ten strikes. Ten o’clock. Auction open.
‘Let’s begin!’ she called. ‘Presented for your admiration and your bids, ladies and gentlemen: lot number one.’
I waited, scarcely breathing. Lot number one had not appeared. Nobody had entered the room, nobody was walking up to the staging area. The great room, with all its assembled guests, was breathlessly silent: nothing moved.
Beside me, Fionn twitched.
She had something to tell me, but she couldn’t. Shit. I resisted the impulse to turn to her, talk to her, and kept my eyes on the stage.
After a moment, something changed.
I heard the faint sounds of running water.
The pool forme
d rapidly. Where previously there had been a bare stone floor, freshly swept, there now came a watery glimmer: aqua-blue, lit with its own ethereal glow. Those waters were never still; they flowed in a smooth spiral, slow, mesmerising.
Then, there came a face at the centre of that pool; a tousled mane of fair hair, untouched by the waters; a slim figure, clad in a simple white gown, rising smoothly from the deep. She wore pearls at her throat, her wrists, and woven in her hair, and her eyes were closed.
Mearil.
I didn’t move a muscle, didn’t make a sound, but Fi knew what I felt anyway. She leaned, fractionally, nearer to me.
Interestingly, so did Phélan.
The crowd applauded, and well they might: what a show! And how deeply fucking unhelpful, because if we’d expected to be able to move in and get these selkies out, we were nicely stymied. These were the same waters we’d seen at the Selkie’s Pearls night club, the same portal device. Somehow, Fi had known nothing about it in advance, despite the pearls she’d made from the waters here. How had they kept it from her? How were they doing this?
Where the hell had they sent Mearil in from?
I wanted, desperately, to charge up there, grab Mea, deck the mistress of ceremonies (and anyone else who got in my way), and get the hell out. But I couldn’t. Siren-song or no, I couldn’t take on so many people, even with Phélan and Fionn to assist me. And while rescuing Mea was an objective of primary importance with me, to do so now would do nothing to help Melly, and any other selkies who were still being held. We had no idea where they were, and until we did I’d have to be cold and hard. Like Fi.
I controlled myself with an effort, gritting my teeth so hard my jaw began to hurt. Mercifully perhaps, Mea didn’t open her eyes. Was she aware of the applause, or the laughter? Could she hear the mistress of ceremonies’ description of her saleable points, or the numbers soon afterwards called out across the auction hall, climbing higher and higher? She appeared to be in some kind of a trance. A mixed blessing.
As Mea had appeared out of the waters, others had filtered into the staging area: guards. Now that the merchandise was beginning to appear on the premises, security was stepping up its efforts. Anybody hoping to get a free taste of the goods was to be strongly discouraged, and these were a tough lot, stone cold and bristling with menace. I didn’t much fancy tangling with them myself.
Before my racing mind had time to come up with a course of action, Mea had gone. Sold. I looked sideways at the person who thought he had bought her: urisk, by the looks of him, none too tall, with a hard, unhandsome face and a goat’s legs. He stood a little apart from the rest of the crowd, alone, and bristling with loneliness. If he imagined purchasing company was like to fix that, I’d have news for him later.
He had not won Mea uncontested. Competition for her had come from all over the room, but the urisk had two competitors in particular: a tall, cloaked figure, features indeterminate, and a ravishing golden-skinned woman whose air and features were, to me, suggestive of the naga.
The next selkie to appear was one I did not recognise, nor did she fit Melly’s description. The same three fought among themselves for her, quickly outpacing the other bidders; the numbers grew shockingly high. The naga was the winner, this time; the urisk again, for the third; then the mysterious cloaked figure, who remained an enigma. I wondered, briefly, if this could be Daix, but dismissed the thought. The only thing I could be reasonably sure of was that the build was masculine, and he was certainly too tall. And too rich. He won a fragile-looking, blonde little flower of a selkie with a sum that would have purchased a house in Knightsbridge.
Fionn’s turn approached. I took her arm again, and drifted towards the podium, Fi in tow and Phélan at my back. As the unfortunate blonde sank back into the glittering azure pool, I issued instructions to Fionn, and took up a station nearby.
Fionn walked out into the centre of the stage, avoiding the pool. She stood there in her satin and her pearls, head held high, as the mistress of ceremonies went smoothly through the long list of her assets and accomplishments. Ancients are among the more powerful of the fae, and Fionn was unquestionably the most powerful of the selkies on offer. Extraordinary beauty, said the MC, even for a selkie. Remarkable talent as a designer. Control of her company, Serenity. The list went on, more and more nauseating with every word.
Fionn bore it all without a flicker.
I kept my eyes on the urisk. He listened with close attention to every one of Fionn’s proffered features, his eyes never wavering from her face. When the bidding opened, I was unsurprised to find him among the most aggressive.
Bids quickly went sky-high. Fionn was the jewel of this revolting auction, and everybody there knew it. Sickened, I tuned out the bidding after a while, and turned my thoughts to my plan of action.
I didn’t really have one. We didn’t have one; our objective had been to discover the whereabouts of the selkies set to be auctioned, and we hadn’t. I had no idea of the range of the enchantments operating those pools. Were the selkies nearby? They could be in another country for all we knew. Unlikely, but not impossible. Most likely they were somewhere in the city, but as to where—
Fionn was moving. I looked hard at her, trying to catch her eye, because she couldn’t possibly be so reckless as to repeat her manoeuvre at the Pearls club, surely? Surely?
She could. She was showing herself off, on the face of it: turning slowly, displaying her figure, her gown, in a horrid mockery of her catwalk style. But every step took her nearer to the pool. When the bidding on her closed, she wouldn’t walk offstage again and return to my side. She’d disappear into that damned pool.
I felt a grip on my elbow: Phélan. ‘You’re planning something crazy,’ he hissed in my ear.
‘I’m not,’ I growled. ‘She is.’
‘And you’re going to follow, aren’t you? Dive right in there after her, for all the world as though you aren’t liable to drown in water.’
‘I can’t let her go alone.’
‘She’s at least as tough as you are.’
‘Even so—’
‘Look, one of you is a magical creature of the waters, and it isn’t you. So tell me again how you expect to be able to help in there?’
My hands formed fists, nails digging into my skin hard enough to hurt. Damn him, he wasn’t wrong. I didn’t have Fionn’s pearls this time; I’d drown in minutes. But what was I to do, then? Just stand there and watch Fi disappear, and hope she made it out again alive?
The auction seemed to be drawing to a close; Fionn was the last lot on the schedule. Perhaps that was why the urisk was heading my way. Had he won the bidding on Fionn? I hadn’t caught the denouement. I waited, half my attention on Fionn and half on the urisk as he approached.
He gave me a curt nod. ‘Nice score,’ he said in a rich, gravelly tone, indicating Fionn. ‘How’d you get ahold of her?’
‘We go way back,’ I said, coolly.
‘Selling out your friends, is it?’ He nodded again. ‘If they’re fool enough to give you the opportunity, fair play.’
Unsure where he was going with this line of enquiry, I merely lifted a brow, and waited.
He grinned, showing a mouthful of crooked teeth. ‘Got any more where she came from? Something a bit shorter, by preference. Clever. And I like them… fiery.’
A suspicion darted into my mind, and I looked harder at the urisk. ‘Do I know you?’
The grin widened.
‘I—’ I began, but got no further.
Several things happened at once.
The room erupted into applause, the bidding, and apparently the auction, finished.
Fionn raised her arms, took a step, and sank gracefully into the swirling pool, meeting my eyes only briefly as she vanished. I read a note of apology there, and determination.
And the urisk leaned into me, bumping me with his shoulders. Something cool fell into my hands, cool and smooth; a string of pearls.
‘Go,’ hissed the urisk, i
n a different voice entirely.
‘Daix? What the—’
‘What, you want to do questions? Now? Are you letting her go alone or what?’
I cast a last, frantic look at the roomful of fae, every one of them rotten to the core. Several of them had bought the selkies we were meant to protect; even now they were moving, preparing to collect their purchases, take them away, trap them forever. Something had to be done about that.
‘I’ve got this,’ hissed Daix. ‘Fuck’s sake, if you miss your chance I will kill you.’
‘Right.’ I grabbed the pearls in a tight fist and bolted for the pool.
The pool was closing, fading, its waters retracting. I closed the remaining distance in a leap, landed up to my ankles in chill waters; gasped as the cold spread to my legs and hips, drawing me down.
Only belatedly did I realise Phélan was a scant step behind me. His hands closed on me, drawing me close; where I went, he went.
We both went down, down into the dark, and as the waters closed over my head I heard Phélan beginning to choke.
Chapter Seventeen: Fionn
The waters couldn’t touch me, this time. Not with my sealskin at my back, and my pearls intact.
But, they didn’t try to.
Last time I’d travelled by these deceptively beautiful waters, there had been a… greedy quality to the procedure. I’d felt engulfed, torn at; near drained, by the time I’d emerged into the Thames. As though I’d been half absorbed.
This was different. Nothing tried to take anything from me. Instead of greed, these waters were exulting.
I felt welcomed.
As the waters closed over my head and dragged me down into darkness, I tried to tell myself this was a good thing. That there wasn’t a gloating element to that welcome; that I hadn’t done exactly what I’d told Tai I wouldn’t, and walked straight into a trap set just for me.
Hell and High Water Page 20
