Chapter 8
Vaelor Crest straightened his gloves before going into the hall.
The action was unnecessary. The leather was already clean and flawless, perfectly stitched. However, habit was important. Myre was also a land where manners were speech, and Vaelor knew this language perfectly.
There was a hint of oil and old stone in the bidding room's air. VoicesFilter: There were echoes of voices, soft and controlled, lacking warmth. Voices were human, lacking ornamentation.
Vaelor preferred it this way.
He took his seat without undue haste, his eyes taking in the raised platform, the cages lining it, and the merchants entering. His vision stirred by reflex—not the hot flash of amateurish curiosity, but the calculated raising of the veil, just enough to glimpse what was significant.
Values emerged.
Not quantities in the broad sense, but weights. Probabilities. Deviations.
They mostly enslaved the bodies that appeared as dim silhouettes—the predictable, tired, already-shaped-by-despair bodies. Their possible futures were limited to branching towards obedience or towards being discarded.
Boring
Vaelor sighed mentally.
"Then something shifted."
A subtle distortion wave lingered on the periphery of his perception.
He straightened up
The next cage was wheeled forward.
Male.
Tall.
Poor condition.
Chains too tight for someone intended to live for a long period of time.
And yet—
Vaelor's sight weakened
Failed! Resisted!
He frowned.
Incompatible patterns clung to the boundaries around the slave shape, defying convergence into a complete form, as if reality itself was confused in regard to where the slave belonged. Vaelor sensed a gentle pressure at his temples, a warning he had not experienced in years.
"That's new," he whispered.
"The merchant announced the goods."
This is routine language. "Found at the edge of the forest." There was no documentation. "Healthy enough."
Vaelor barely listened.
His gaze was fixed on the slaver's eyes.
Blue.
Too clear.
They were unfocused now, their minds dulled by exhaustion, but beneath it, something was watching back. Not fear, not submission.
Observation.
A spark of something alarmingly akin to interest flickered within Vaelor.
"How much?" asked someone.
"Bids started. Low. C
Vaelor did not raise his hand.
Not yet.
He expanded his sight slightly, testing.
The reaction was swift.
Pain, not acute but probing, touched his temples. The slave's presence interfered with the flow of interpretation, like an interruption in a sentence that could not be supplied.
Impossible.
"Contract mark," Vaelor whispered. "No no contract mark, no no no
"A human should not do this."
The auction proceeded.
Finally, Vaelor raised his hand.
The hall fell silent. Others noticed. They always did.
The final bid was accepted.
Vaelor exhaled slowly
As the attendants were transferring ownership, he permitted a mere smile on his lips.
"A deviation from the Mad King's balance," he thought.
"A mistake. or an opportunity."
He stood up, his mind already racing
If the sight itself could not read the boy correctly, then the rules could not either. In Myre, to anyone who let something fall through the cracks, something was simply erased— Or weaponized.