Chapter 5-5

To Anjanette, being in the auction house was like being a dinosaur in a city. She was surrounded by people who were all staring at her as though her existance was some sort of faux pas. She was dressed up in furs that covered almost her entire body, still one of Golden Street’s most wanted. The shock of red hair poking out from under her cap and the large sword strapped to her back were a bit of an attention-getter.

Leonas and Milly fit in little better. Although it was theoretically an open auction, it was populated almost exclusively by nobles and rich business people.

“The chair I’m sitting on probably costs more than my parents’ house does,” muttered Leonas as they waited for the auction to start.

The auction began, a ritualized and dull affair. They moved up from cheap but curious trinkets into jewellery and works of art. Obscene amounts of money were being thrown about, with one statue going for 225 gold crowns.

“Um, Leonas?” asked Milly in a whisper. “How are we going to afford this?”

“We can’t,” he said casually. “I’ll make the winning bid, go up on stage, and cast a smoke spell. Then we run like the devil himself was at our backs.

“Are you sure that’ll work? I mean, they have pretty good security.”

“Well, we won’t know until we try.”

Milly sat there, nervously playing with the hem of her robe. Finally, the proprieter got to the shard. “An Ancient text of unknown origin, in fine condition, being sold from the de Catalan’s estate,” announced a bored-looking auctioneer. “Bidding shall begin at one gold crown.”

“Four crowns,” bid a fat man dressed in the indulgences of nobility.

“Ten crowns,” bid Leonas, drawing a murmur fron the crowd. He sat back down, face unreadable.

A tall, aristocratic man stood up from the crowd. “Fifteen gold crowns.” Milly gasped. It was Valgard. She shrunk into a ball.

“Twenty,” Leonas bid, gritting his teeth.

“Thirty,” said Valgard with a nonchalant shrug.

“Forty,” said Leonas. They had probably now passed the street value of it as an antique.

“Fifty gold crowns,” bid Valgard. The auctioneer grinned, these sorts of squabbles were what made auctions so profitable. That sculpture from earlier might have fetched twenty crowns in a pawn shop, but the sculptor happened to be the favourite of two of the bidders.

It was at that point that the guards bust in.

They surrounded Leonas, Milly and Anjanette in a moment, spears pointing at them like a mouth of sharp metallic fangs. “You three are under arrest for multiple counts of fraud. For your protection you should remain silent and compliant, as any actions or words you take now will be—“ Anjanette had already broken her chair over the head of the speaker. He fell with a dull thump.

There was a brief half-second before the fight broke out, which seemed to stretch into eternity. The guards gaped. The nobles and merchants gasped in shock and muttered in scandalous tones, those near the fracas fleeing as well as they could in high heels and suits. Anjanette drew the oversized sword from her back, metal angrily shrieking as it scraped metal. Milly silently and efficient struck a fighting pose, producing from her sleeves a hooked knife for each hand. Leonas bolted up and looked for any sort of exit. Valgard just sat back and waited for the curtains to rise.

Anjanette moved first. She tossed her broadsword carelessly at the nearest guard (it was only good as a bluff, the huge thing was hollow) and then laid into another with a roundhouse kick. The stiff kick hit his jaw with a resounding oomph, and he sunk to the floor like a deflated baloon. Then the storm broke.

Milly’s blades flashed as she attacked the nearest guard, avoiding his clumsy thrusts. Her blades neatly sliced the guard’s armour at the seams, until the breastplate fell apart like a beetle’s shell. Another quick stab to the gut downed him with a wet gurgle. She moved on to the next guard. Her awkward movements were gone, her body moving with an inhuman grace.

Anjanette swung her fists and feet around seemingly wildly, but seemed to hit more often then not. The guards surrounded her, drawing swords to fight in close. One blade struck her in the shoulder, tearing flesh with a sickening scrape. Anjanette’s shoudler was on fire, blowing crimson smoke, but she ignored the pain and hit the offending guard with a haymaker and he crumpeld immediately.

Leonas was not a fighter by professsion, but the guards were still having a hard time with him. They swung with their swords, but somehow none of them so much as scratched the scammer. For his part, Leonas once tried an incantation, but while pausing to make the hand motions the broad side of a spear caught him in the chest. He fell onto his back, air rushing out of his lungs like a panicked mob, head spinning. Another spear very nearly pinned him to the ground, but Leonas managed to roll out of the way. Still, he made a note not to try that again.

The crowd of nobles watched with an increased fervour. They roared when one of the guards landed a hit, and jeered when one went down. They seemed to be doing a lot more jeering. The remaining guards regrouped, looking at their downed fellows. The trio, keeping an eye to them, starting to hustle towards the exit.

A huge gold blur barelled out of nowhere, impacting into Leonas and driving him back. He felt his bones jostling with vibrations, and then he was tackled into a bank of chairs, which collapsed in around him. He hit his head somewhere on the way down and everything went black.

The girls spun over to see what happened. Standing triumphantly over Leonas was a man three times his girth and probably twice his weight. The mammoth warrior was wearing gold and silver armour with an ornate crest lovingly carved into the back
Another gold-plated warrior, this one much more lightly armoured and no more than five feet tall, sprung at Anjanette. Anjanette threw a flawless right hand, but somehow the small warrior caught her hand and used it as a base to spring around, kicking Anjanette in the back of the head. She slumped over, and was soon caught up in a hurricane of blows by the strange man.

Milly turned to the two, but found that she had her own opponent. A tall swordsman, clad entirely in golden mail, stared down at her, longsword in hand. She nodded and store him down – at least as well as she could. Both watched each other for any sign of movement, waiting for someone to make the first mistake.

And then something caught Milly on the back of her head, and down she went.
Valgard stood above the fallen body of Milly, blunt end of his sword extended. Everyone stared. “The House of Alleria is always willing to aid in enforcing justice,” he said, the golden warriors bowing behind him. “Now take them away.

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