carl@fire

Millicent—Milli for short—was a very pretty young woman of nineteen years. She may have only been from a moderately wealthy merchant family, the Ryalls, but her beauty and poise was such that she was able to fill one of the highest-paying and most prestigious positions in the city: greeting patrons with a smile at the Creature Marketplace's evening auctions and providing them with information should they have any questions.

It was a dull job. Milli hated it. Her father had grabbed on with both hands when the opportunity had been presented, likely to acquire the discount her family now enjoyed on non-auction purchases, and it was now her second month of sitting behind her desk with a smile stuck on her face as old men tried to sneak glances down her dress while they asked inane questions.

She'd been propositioned for money no less than two dozen times already. The thought alone caused her ever-present smile to fade for a moment in annoyance. She was betrothed! The sheer gall of those men, thinking she'd…

Well, she had accepted that one time when Edmund Leventhorp had stepped aside from his wife and discreetly inquired. Milli had endured a rare fight with her father-approved husband-to-be Antony the day prior, and Edmund was dashing and sharp with his wit. It had been quick and quite enjoyable, and that had been that. It was not something she should be worried about.

Everyone did such things in this city—well, everyone who wasn't royalty, of course. It wasn't as though anyone had expected that she remain faithful, was it? So what if she had a dalliance or two with one incredibly handsome and vigorous man. Or perhaps three or four, but who was truly keeping track?

Certainly not Milli, despite having arranged to meet Edmund for a sixth time the following day. People called it the City of Lust for a reason, didn't they?

Milli sighed fondly and squeezed her thighs together under her desk as she recalled—

The outer doors—both of them—opened, and a giant, glowing spear entered the wide atrium of the Creature Marketplace, followed by an almost equally-giant, bearded, barefoot man. A skeleton followed after him.

Milli stared, her previous thoughts dashed from her head. And… He was heading towards her?

The guards standing just inside the entrance were stunned for far shorter than she was. One of them gasped, and then they walked after the man while each reaching for the guns on their belts.

The young woman shrank down in her seat as much as she could, feeling incredibly uncomfortable with such weapons pointed in her direction. She prayed to her Goddess, the Goddess of Light, to keep her safe.

"Your supervisor, bring him to me. Now." The spear-bearer's voice was deep and commanding, but one look at the frightful glow that his spear was letting off—not to mention his walking skeleton—had left her in a sort of daze.

"Halt!" called Lewis, one of the guards stationed at the main entrance that evening. "Weapons are not permitted here," he said, speaking the rules that everyone knew . "Neither are undead. And…" he trailed off as he looked down, presumably at the man's feet. "We do require our patrons to be fully clothed," he added.

It was all common sense!

The unknown man stared down at her for a while longer before turning to the guards, who immediately tensed. "Do you know who I am?" he demanded, pounding the not-pointy end of his spear against the ground.

Lewis and Gil looked at each other.

Milli certainly had no idea who he was.

"No," said Lewis with less confidence than she would have liked.

"I think the man in charge here will," the giant said, obviously referring to Mister Neale, "and he's likely to be very upset with the lack of respect I'm being shown."

The comment gave the guards and Milli pause. Could he be an eccentric noble? Perhaps a visitor from a different nation who had been personally invited by Mister Neale? The current owner of the marketplace was enigmatic himself, looking to be in his twenties but having been in his position for longer than Milli had been alive, and he seldom shared the more secret business he conducted with others. Not that he was actually the owner, of course; it was perhaps the worst-kept secret in the city that the Creature Marketplace was owned and funded by the royal family.

By the time Milli roused herself from her musings, the man had moved to stand next to the fountain. "One hundred coins," he said, raising over the water his hand that wasn't holding upright a large, obviously-magical weapon.

A small stream of coins shot out of his palm and into the fountain.

Milli rose from her seat as she stared, intending to see if it had been an illusion.

"One thousand coins," he said a moment later.

A slightly larger stream of coins poured out of his hand and into the fountain.

She was near enough now that she could see that the coins were quite real.

"One hundred thousand coins," the man said casually.

Milli's eyes were riveted to his hand where a river of coins flowed out in just over the time it took to blink. The small discs splashed and clattered, easily rising higher than the surface of the water and completely blocking off a significant portion of the fountain's lowest level as well as some of its middle level. Water began running off the side of the fountain and onto the floor, where it streamed to the base of the man's magic spear and then raced up the spear to gather just above its point.

"I may tire of standing here if this continues," the man said, "at which point I imagine the room would begin to grow uncomfortably damp. And if I miss the auction I've come for…"

Milli realized that he was now speaking to her and rose to the occasion. What had she been thinking? Of course she should have fetched Mister Neale at once! If the situation had happened a few minutes earlier or later, when her mind was in a more ready state, then she was certain she would have handled it with her usual grace.

"I'll find Mister Neale right away!" she said quickly before she cautiously avoided the skeleton on her way to the small doorway on the left which led to a hallway. She hurried past another pair of guards and towards the rear of the auction stage as fast as she could move in the heeled shoes that she wore for her job.

She was not supposed to trespass back here tonight. No, Mister Neale had been quite clear that on this night, nobody was allowed in the area behind the curtain unless he had explicitly called for them. There was something special being sold tonight, and all of the most elite guards that the marketplace employed had been called on duty.

Milli had considered this, of course. She had also considered, however, that the giant in the atrium seemed completely unruffled by the presence of Lewis and Gil. Also his spear had seemed quite deadly.

And his skeleton had looked at her in a manner that had made her more uncomfortable than the stares of any number of creepy old men.

She came to a halt just before she left the long, narrow hallway and entered the area that would put her in the large space where the pieces for the evening's auction were prepared.

Yes, pieces. They were alive, so they could not be items. But they were not people, of course, as that would mean they must be slaves, and devilkin were most certainly not capable of being either. Instead, they were simply pieces of a household, awaiting the new homes that the marketplace would provide.

But now Milli was concerned about herself. She couldn't simply charge out into the staging area! That might surprise one of the guards and end with her receiving scars on her pretty face! She considered it for a moment.

"Mister Neale!" she whispered loudly, aware that speaking too loudly here might be heard out in the auction hall, the sounds of which were clearly audible to her as Mister Cecil managed the bidding of the current auction. "Mister Neale!"

The man himself appeared before her after a few more calls.

"Milli, I trust something urgent has come up?" Mister Neale asked in his usual, quiet tone that made her feel like she needed to be fully honest about anything and everything.

She nodded quickly, clasping her hands in front of herself as she prepared a brief summary of the events in the manner that Mister Neale preferred. "A man came to the front. He's mentioned you, carries a giant, magic spear, and has made over a hundred thousand coins appear by magic into the fountain. He… He also has a walking skeleton which follows him. He says he's here for a specific auction."

Mister Neale touched the underside of his chin with his index finger momentarily, as he tended to do when he was considering something. "I'll be along shortly," he said before disappearing around the corner once more into the staging area.

Milli hurried back towards the atrium, the clack of her heels echoing in the confines of the hallway. She burst back through the curtain and into the atrium.

The huge man was turned towards her and standing still. A sizable sphere of water had grown atop his spear, and water continued to feed into it as it traveled up the shaft.

His skeleton was stroking the underside of its jaw as though deep in thought.

"My apologies for the wait," Milli said, finding that she was uncomfortably out of breath after attempting to move so quickly while wearing a corset. "He'll be along in—"

"Good evening," Mister Neale called from a short distance behind her.

She managed to only relax slightly from the relief she felt instead of leaning against the wall as she would have preferred to do.

Mister Neale's head moved from side to side as he stepped around her and towards the man. "It seems I'd forgotten your reservation, Mister…"

"Carl," said the unusual man in an overly-familiar tone. "Yes, reservation indeed, Neale. I believe I was offered seating in the royal section."

The royal section? Milli's brows raised. He was claiming to be a representative of the crown?

"Were you now," Neale said in a neutral tone that sounded just as skeptical as Milli was feeling.

"Ah, I do apologize for the mess," said the man named Carl, looking down to the mound of coins and the overflowing fountain. "It seems my purse has sprung a leak. Allow me to tidy up." After such an absurd statement and with a touch of his finger to one of the coins, the mountain of coins began to move in reverse, rapidly vanishing as if his finger itself could contain such a huge quantity.

Milli gawped along with Lewis and Gil who still stood on the opposite side of Carl.

He didn't seem to be finished, however. He flicked his spear towards the fountain with a faint expression of annoyance on his face, and the water that had gathered atop it dropped gracefully into the fountain where it landed with a disconcertingly loud splash and refilled the basin.

"My seat, if you would," he said, turning back to Mister Neale. "I'm certain you would understand why I might grow upset if I were to be late for the particular auction that I've come for."

Milli continued to stare at the fountain as the exchange of words faded into a buzz. He'd simply made coins appear and then disappear? And so many! Surely that had to be magic. She'd never practiced or been taught, but it had to be.

Her thoughts were disrupted after a moment by Mister Neale. "Milli," he said while looking back at her, "my thanks for taking the initiative on this matter."

That was all Milli needed to hear. She bowed slightly, then waited until Mister Neale had taken the strange man, Carl, and his skeleton away before returning slowly to her desk where she began adjusting her hair and dress after her hasty departure and return.

"Who the fuck was that?" asked Gil a little while later.