The auction hall was a converted warehouse near the north pier, cleared out and fitted with rows of chairs facing a raised platform where the auctioneer, a stout woman with a voice that could strip paint, was organizing her lots.
Katarina sat next to Seris in the third row and counted heads.
Forty-two goddamn bidders. Most of them were small house representatives or independent merchants hoping to grab something useful at a discount. A few she recognized from the trade registries. Most she didn’t.
Stellara Brevaine was in the back row, left side, in a chair she’d somehow made look like a throne. She wasn’t holding a bidding paddle. But, funny enough, she didn’t need one.
Because she had proxies. A lot of ’em.
Katarina spotted the first one within twenty minutes. A woman in the seventh row who bid on Lot 3, a warehouse lease on the eastern pier, with the mechanical precision of someone following instructions. She didn’t hesitate, didn’t flinch at the counter-bids, and raised her paddle exactly twice before the other bidder dropped out.
The second proxy was a human, older, sitting near the middle. He took Lot 8, a set of supplier agreements for bulk grain, with the same pattern: calm entry, steady escalation, no overshoot.
The third was harder to spot. She was young, sitting two rows behind Katarina, and she didn’t bid on anything for the first hour. Then Lot 14 came up, a distribution contract covering three towns inland, and she raised her paddle once, at precisely the right moment, and won it at a price that told Katarina she’d known in advance what the reserve was.
There were three proxies in three different parts of the room, bidding on different categories so no single person looked like they were sweeping the floor. If you weren’t watching for it, you’d think it was three unrelated buyers with different interests.
[But you all stopped bidding below the same ceiling, your entry timing follows the same pattern, and none of you have touched a lot that isn’t infrastructure. You’re running the same playbook. Honestly, I’d be charmed if it wasn’t for the fact that it’s my town you’re buying up.]
She tracked them lot by lot. Warehouse contracts went to proxy one, supplier agreements to proxy two, distribution rights to proxy three. Boring stuff. Essential stuff. Assets that nobody else in this room understood were worth more than everything else combined.
Lot 22 was a set of cultivation pills. Twelve doses, mid-grade, good for a modest qi boost that lasted about six hours. A cluster of young cultivators near the front started bidding immediately and the price climbed fast.
Two gold. Three. Four. Five.
[Those pills generate less qi than a good night’s sleep. You’d get more benefit from an afternoon nap and a decent meal.]
Six gold.
[SIX GOLD PER DOSE! CRIMINAL! That’s enough to fund a trade route survey and these idiots are spending it on supplements!]
She gripped her own knees and breathed through her nose until the lot closed at six and a half gold per dose, purchased by a girl who looked extremely proud of herself. Seris glanced at her sideways.
"Are you alright?"
"F-Fine. Just watching."
The lots rolled on. Stellara’s proxies picked up two more warehouse leases, a port handling agreement, and a carriage service contract. The small house bidders won scraps. A wine collection here, decorative furniture there, things that looked like victories but weren’t.
Then Lot 47.
"Trade route license," the auctioneer announced. "Greypass corridor, Selvarra and Coppiano to the southern coast. Inactive three years. Reserve price: eight silver marks."
Eight silver. For a trade route license.
Katarina had paid more for dinner!
The auctioneer looked around the room. Nobody moved.
"Eight silver marks. Do I have eight silver?"
Katarina raised her paddle.
A few heads turned, mostly out of curiosity. A thirteen-year-old bidding at a trade auction was unusual enough to draw glances. But the lot itself drew nothing. No counter-bids, no interest. The proxies didn’t flinch because the Greypass was a known dead route and dead routes didn’t fit the strategy.
"Eight silver to the young lady in row three. Going once. Going twice."
The gavel came down.
"Sold."
Katarina set her paddle in her lap and kept her face neutral, which took effort, because inside she was doing a victory lap around a stadium that existed only in her head.
[Lot 47. Mine. Eight silver marks for a trade route that connects two inland producer towns directly to the coast. Everyone in this room just watched me buy the most strategically valuable asset in the catalog and nobody even noticed.]
Seris leaned over.
"A trade route through the Greypass? Why?"
"Because Selvarra and Coppiano have no coastal outlet. Every producer in those towns ships overland to the central markets at three times the cost. If I can secure the route, they’ll pay to use ours because it’s still cheaper than their alternative. And nobody else in the district holds a competing corridor."
Seris stared at her for a moment.
"You... You just bought a monopoly for eight silver marks."
[Oh? I didn’t think this world was familiar with the concept of a monopoly.]
"I bought a potential monopoly. It’s not worth anything until I figure out how to make it safe."
[But you can bet your damn mortgage I’ll find a way.]
Seris leaned back in her chair. She didn’t say anything else, but she looked at Katarina the way she’d been looking at her more and more often lately, like she was still catching up to who, or what, her daughter actually was.
The post-auction gathering spilled out into the courtyard behind the hall. Wine, food, and the particular energy of people who’d just spent tons of money and wanted to feel good about it.
Katarina should have been working the room. Stellara had swept most of the infrastructure lots and the district’s small houses were going to feel the squeeze within six months. She needed to start conversations, plant seeds, begin building the coalition she’d outlined the night before.
But, well... Vessa found her first.
Vessa was wearing the dress. The blue one with the embroidery that her mother had spent two weeks on. The one Katarina had said "I’m sure it’s fine" about without looking up from her auction notes.
She was looking now.
[Hormones... Please... Have mercy...]
The neckline sat low enough to show collarbones and the top of a chest that had not been there six months ago. Vessa’s dark hair was loose around her shoulders instead of pulled back, and she was smiling the way she smiled when she knew she looked good and wanted Katarina to know she knew.
[I take it back. It’s not fine. It’s a weapon of war and I was not briefed.]
"So?" Vessa said. "The dress."
Katarina gave her one more look up and down and condensed all her thoughts to:
"You look great."
Her face, unfortunately, was not cooperating. She could feel the heat climbing up her neck and there was absolutely nothing she could do about it.
Vessa’s smile got wider. She’d noticed.
"Better than ’fine’?"
"I said I was sorry about that."
"You did. I haven’t forgiven you yet."
[This bratty little...]
They were in the middle of figuring out whether Katarina was going to survive the rest of this conversation when a voice appeared at her shoulder.
"That was a curious purchase, little Montecardi."
Katarina turned. Stellara Brevaine was standing three feet away with a wine glass in her hand and the same smile she’d worn in their study two weeks ago.
"A dangerous route that nobody wants. I wonder what you see in it."
She said it sweetly. The way you’d ask a child about a drawing, gentle and patient, inviting a naive answer.
Katarina’s brain, still half-occupied with Vessa’s neckline, had to execute the fastest pivot of her two lifetimes. She felt the flush on her face and couldn’t kill it in time, so she owned it, let it read as a thirteen-year-old caught off guard by a powerful adult, which was half true.
"I guess I have a soft spot for overlooked things," Katarina said.
Stellara’s smile stayed. Her eyes didn’t change, which meant the smile had never been real, which Katarina had already known.
"How charming," Stellara said. She held Katarina’s gaze for one beat longer than necessary, then turned and walked back into the crowd.
Vessa stepped closer. She’d watched the whole exchange and her smile was gone.
"Kat, who was that?"
[The most dangerous woman in Vellasera. And I just told her to her face that I know something she doesn’t.]
"Stellara Brevaine," Katarina said.
"What did she want?"
"To see if I’d tell her why I bought the route."
"Did you?"
"No. But I told her I bought it on purpose, which is almost as bad."
Vessa looked at the spot where Stellara had disappeared into the crowd, then back at Katarina.
"So, what are you gonna do with this trade route?"
Katarina picked up a glass of juice from a passing tray and took a sip.
"First, I need to figure out the Greypass." She looked at Vessa. "And I need you to stop wearing that dress if you want me to think clearly for the rest of the evening."
"Take it off me then."
Katarina damn near fainted.