Chapter 155: The Long Hall

The steel stayed at the door.

A Treasury clerk stood under the arch of the long hall with the Emperor’s seal on a cord round his neck and a rack of swords behind him, and every guest who came up the white stairs gave him something.

Varek gave him a blade as long as the clerk was tall, and watched him stagger with it. Lucan unbuckled a thin sword with a silver hilt and handed it over with a joke about getting it back sharper. Theo held out a short knife in a worn sheath, and the clerk wrote it in his book as one knife, Veil make, old, until Theo asked him to write "my mother’s" instead.

The clerk looked at Hush’s empty belt and wrote nothing.

The long hall of the palace was a hundred paces of white floor under a painted ceiling, with tall windows down one side and the Emperor’s chair at the far end, empty, with a cloth of gold over its arms. In front of the chair stood a lectern, and beside the lectern the Treasurer’s glass on its black iron stand.

Coin’s grey swords stood along both walls, as they had in the Treasurer’s court, with steel at their hips to keep the auction peace. The Treasurer paid them by the sword. A tall man in grey plate, with a gold band on his shoulder, stood at the Treasurer’s elbow.

[Unknown. Rank A. Hostility: 0%.]

"My captain," Coin whispered, settling into the chair next to Hush at the makers’ table. He had on a clean apron for the occasion, which was still an apron. "The Treasurer rents him by the day. Eight hundred crowns, because an A at his elbow looks well in the Emperor’s book." He sighed with deep content. "I’d stand there myself for that, but then who would sit with you?"

The makers’ table ran along the left wall, under the windows. Eight makers sat at it with their lots in front of them in small closed boxes. Two seats down from Hush, in a fresh green coat with a fresh flower, sat Tarquin Veil.

"Master Hush." He bowed from his chair. "I follow you. Lot two."

The hood dipped, and said nothing. Then Hush took a folded slip from his sleeve and laid it open on the table between them: the Bureau’s receipt, twenty-seven parts of forty, ground glass, with Tarquin’s own name signed at the bottom.

The maker on Tarquin’s other side leaned over to read it.

Tarquin turned the slip face down with one finger, and smiled at the black box in front of Hush instead.

’He’s still hoping it splits.’

Across the hall, on the long bench facing the windows, the bidders sat in a row. Lucan in Sarkhane colors, at his ease, with a clerk behind him holding a writing case. Varek with his legs out, taking up the room of two men. Theo at the end, sitting up straight, with both hands on his knees.

And between Lucan and Varek, because somebody at the Treasury had a sense of humor, sat Vivienne Ashgrave, in plain grey with her hair up, with her maid behind her and Luna lying across both princes’ boots.

Varek moved his feet. Luna did not move hers.

Cardinal Sallow stood by the far wall in white and gold, with his brass lantern shut on its chain. Aren kept two pillars between the hood and the lantern, and did not look at it again.

The Treasurer came in through the small door behind the Emperor’s chair. He bowed to the empty chair and then to the hall, and did not waste any words.

"The Gift Auction of the Choosing. The crown takes a tenth of every hammer. Bids in thousands of crowns, called aloud, against a seal and the coin behind it. Each maker states the grade of his lot. After the hammer, I read the lot on my glass for the Emperor’s book." He looked along the makers’ table. "If my glass reads lower than the maker said, the sale is void, and the maker belongs to the Bureau. Lot one."

A Treasury clerk came down the makers’ table, took the black box from in front of Hush and carried it to the lectern. The Treasurer opened it so the bench could see, and did not touch what was inside.

The pill was the size of a pea. Seren called it the red of old liver. To Aren it had been a grey bead on white paper all week.

Coin rose and said to the hall, "Lot one. The House states grade seven."

The noise went down the hall to the door and came back louder. A maker near the end of the table put his hand over his mouth. Tarquin laughed once, softly, and wrote something on his cuff.

On the bench, Varek sat up and pulled in his legs.

"Seven." He told it to the ceiling. "The Veils sell fours."

The Treasurer dipped his pen. "Sixteen thousand to begin. The price of the best Drum ever sold."

Before the clerk had written it down, Theo was on his feet.

"Twenty thousand!"

He said it far too loudly, and his voice cracked in the middle, and the whole hall turned and looked at the end of the bench. Theo’s hand closed hard on the back of the bench, and he stayed on his feet.

Lucan looked along the bench at him with real pity. "Your house sells the Bureau glass, cousin, and you bid with what’s left?"

"I bid with my horses. Mine."

Lucan turned back to the lectern. "Fifty."

Varek didn’t even look round. "Sixty."

"Seventy."

Varek leaned forward round the bride to look at his cousin. "Is this one for her, Lucan, or for your blood?"

Somebody along the wall laughed and turned it into a cough. Lucan did not turn his head.

Varek didn’t wait for an answer. "Seventy-five."

"Eighty," Lucan said to the lectern.

"Eighty-five."

Coin made a small happy noise at the makers’ table, like a man smelling bread.

Then Vivienne lifted her hand.

She did not stand. She held up the Ashgrave seal between two fingers, a silver moon on black wax, and the Treasurer’s eyes went to it at once.

"Two hundred thousand crowns in coin. The chests of House Ashgrave."

The long hall went so quiet that Aren heard the clerk’s pen scratch to a stop.

Lucan was the first to speak, and he spoke to the lectern, pleasantly. "Treasurer. The lady is the prize. Can the prize bid?"

"The rules ask for a seal and the coin behind it, Highness." The Treasurer kept his pen on the page. "The lady has both. The chests came through the Dry Gate under her father’s seal, and they were counted."

Varek stared at her. "That’s my money you’re spending."

"Not until spring, Your Highness."

At the end of the bench, Theo laughed out loud, and then put his hand over his mouth, too late.

Varek let out a long breath through his nose and looked at the pill on the lectern, and then at the bride beside him, and then, last, at Lucan.

"Four hundred thousand."

A man at the makers’ table dropped his box.

Vivienne lowered the seal and put it away in her sleeve. Her face stayed still. She clenched her hands.

Lucan stood up.

He did not hurry. He turned to the bench first, to his cousins and the bride between them, and smiled at all three with great warmth, the smile from the Treasurer’s court before the Marrow split.

"Six hundred thousand crowns. House Sarkhane." He kept his eyes on Varek. "Let the whole court see what Sarkhane pays for the north."

The noise this time did not come back down the hall.

Varek looked at his cousin for three slow breaths. Then he laughed.

"Keep it, cousin. Oros pays in soldiers." He spread his arms along the back of the bench, as if the whole hall was a tavern he had paid for. "Feed her well. I’d like her strong when I take her from you."

"Six hundred thousand," the Treasurer said, "once."

Theo looked at his hands.

"Twice."

Vivienne looked at nobody.

"Sold to House Sarkhane."

The hammer came down on the lectern, small and flat, and the clerk wrote it in the Emperor’s book.

Coin was already counting on the edge of the makers’ table with one fat finger, his lips moving.

’Six hundred thousand. Sixty to the crown. Ten back to Coin for the Bureau’s fee. Five hundred and thirty left, and a hundred and six of that is Coin’s.’ Aren didn’t move. ’Four hundred and twenty-four thousand crowns, for four thousand crowns of sand.’

Coin leaned over to the hood, beaming.

"I’m going to name a goose after you, my friend! A fat one." He patted his apron. "And lot two is Master Veil’s. He’s going to have such a bad afternoon."

Two seats down, Tarquin had stopped writing on his cuff.

Lucan came up the hall to the lectern with his clerk behind him. The clerk carried the writing case open, and there was a Sarkhane bank note already filled in on top, with the number written in large careful figures. Lucan stopped in front of the Treasurer’s glass and held out his hand.

"It goes from the box to the glass, Highness," the Treasurer said. "The maker’s terms."

"So I’m told." Lucan lowered his hand, still smiling. "I’ll take it from the glass, then."

On the bench, Vivienne turned her head and looked at him.

"Congratulations, Your Highness." She settled back. "Bring it to me yourself. I’d like to watch your hands while you do."

The Treasurer lifted the pill from the box with his own brass tweezers and laid it on the grey of the glass.

At the bride’s feet, Luna laid her head on her paws.

The Treasurer put both hands on the black iron frame, and bent over the glass, and the hall went quiet to hear him.