Bought By the Naga (Monsters’ Bride Market #15)

Bryn

The block is higher than it looks from the floor. Six inches of elevation turns the crowd into something like a painting: a swirl of bidders along the center aisle, merchants at the edges, house guards stationed and bored.

The woman to my left is weeping. Rehearsed. She must think it’s going to increase her price. The girl to my right keeps her hands folded at her waist, chin lifted. Demure. Someone taught her that. Probably the same someone who taught her not to look at the buyers’ faces.

My mother was an adventurer. She taught me to check a room as I walked into it. Count the exits. Watch the hands.

She meant it for wilder places than this, but the principle stands.

The auctioneer is a thin man in a long coat. He reads from a card held at arm’s length. Obviously he needs glasses but won’t wear them. His voice is a reedy tenor that he pushes into his chest because he thinks it sounds authoritative.

“Next lot. Female, human, twenty-five years of age. No formal trade designation.”

Nothing stirs. The wolf lord at the front scratches his jaw.

“Self-entered.”

The stone troll in the second row shakes his head slowly. The kind of headshake a man gives when he sees something he’s seen before, and it never ends well.

Self-entered means I walked onto this block by choice, paid my own entry fee. Nobody put me here. It means I’m either desperate or crazy, and either way, I’m cheap.

Two creatures at the back confer. One of them, a big antlered thing in a leather harness, leans to his companion. I catch enough. Something about no trade and not enough of her to be worth the feed bill. Laughter follows.

The auctioneer raises his wooden hammer.

“Opening bid.”

The wolf lord bids. Insultingly low. Lower than the ones before me. His eyes go to my hips, my chest, and slide off. Not enough to hold his interest. He expects to walk off with the no-trade lot for pocket money.

The stone troll raises. Unhurried. He’s buying domestic labor, probably. Lifting, carrying, the kind of honest work I’ve done before and could do again.

The antlered creature bids fast and high, which means he’s rich, stupid, or both.

The wolf lord re-enters. The stone troll folds his arms and steps back.

I look past all of them.

There is a fifth bidder at the back of the hall, taking up a quarter of the room.

A Naga’s coils do not fit in a human space without rearranging the human space around them.

He has arranged himself as tightly as possible, great looped folds of teal-green scales stacked against the back wall, the tip of his tail curled in against his own body.

The humanoid half rises from that coil: shoulders, a long column of throat, a face.

Gold armor wraps his upper body. Old work.

Filigree across the chest plate, shoulder guards worked into stylized serpents swallowing their own tails.

The gold has darkened in the seams. One of the shoulder plates is slightly loose.

The buckle is original. That armor is older than he is.

I want to draw it. That is the first thing I think. The second thing is less professional.

He is watching me.

Measuring me against the room. Deciding whether I will break walking out of it.

I don’t look away. I don’t drop my eyes, I don’t lift my chin, I don’t do the thing the girl beside me is doing with her folded hands. I look at him. He is a thing in the room, and I am not afraid of things in rooms.

Interested is a different problem.

His expression changes, the muscles under his jaw plates shifting a fraction tighter.

He bids.

The voice is confident but not loud. The number goes through the hall anyway, because no one was expecting it. The price doubles the highest bid.

“Going once.” A hush takes over the room as the auctioneer briefly surveys it. “Going twice.”

The hammer smacks.

“Sold.” The auctioneer turns to me. “Lot accepts?”

I look at the Naga.

“Lot accepts.”

The auctioneer writes the number in the ledger. Somewhere behind me, the demure girl makes a small sound. She has watched a creature pay a fortune for a woman with no trade and no visible reason to be worth that number.

I walk off the block.

Toward him, because that is what comes next. The crowd parts. The wolf lord does not look up. The stone troll inclines his head a quarter of an inch, which is the most generous farewell I’ve had in months.

When I reach him, I stop about three feet out. Closer would be intrusive. Farther would be a flinch.

His eyes go over my face. Up close, their yellow-green is brighter than I expected. His pupils are vertical. His lashes are long in a way that should not work on a face that angular, but does.

A house agent appears beside us, a small round man with a leather folio. He does not look at the Naga directly.

“If you’ll follow me, there’s a settlement room.”

The room is small. Stone walls, a table, two chairs on one side. Neither chair is sized for a Naga. The house agent takes the seat behind the table and opens his folio. The Naga arranges his coils along the wall. The tip of his tail ends up near the door.

I take the remaining chair.

The house agent runs through the terms. Self-entered lot, standard house commission. He names the number. He slides a smaller sum across the table to me in a leather pouch. My lot share.

I take the pouch without counting it and put it in my pack. The money isn’t why I’m here.

The Naga watches this. His head tilts a fraction.

The house agent sets a second document on the table. Transfer of custody.

“This one needs both signatures before I file it,” he says. “Take your time.” He stands, takes his folio, and leaves.

The door closes.

We are alone.

He is very large in a small room. The coils take up most of the floor between us. The gold armor catches the light from the single high window.

“Before you sign that,” he says, “I should tell you what you would be agreeing to.”

I set the pen down and wait.

“I have a temple. Remote. Deep jungle. Hidden. The maintenance it requires is not something I can perform alone.”

He pauses. What comes next costs him something. The muscles along his jaw work before he speaks.

“It requires a second body.” He studies me, searching for any reaction. “There is a risk.”

I don’t react.

“My scales produce a compound. In most humans, prolonged contact causes harm. I have tried this arrangement twice before. Both times, the women were damaged. I sent them home. They recovered. But the harm was real, and I will not tell you otherwise.”

The auction noise is a low hum through the wall. Someone out there is bidding on the demure girl. Her price will be reasonable. Her buyer will get what he expects.

“If your body rejects the contact, I will pay your passage to wherever you want to go. You keep what the auction house gave you regardless.”

He stops talking. He has said what he came to say. He is waiting for me to leave.

He bid a fortune and is now trying to talk me out of taking it. He is terrible at this.

I look at the unsigned document on the table between us.

I have my reasons for being here. He doesn’t need to know them yet.

“I’ll sign,” I say.

Something loosens in his face. Barely.

“You don’t want to think about it?”

“No.”

“You should.”

He holds the question he wants to ask and chooses not to ask it. Not yet.

I pick up the pen the house agent left on the table and sign the document.

I push it across to him. He takes the pen. His hand is scaled, the fingers longer than a human hand. I watch him write his name. There is a strange care in his grip, each finger finding its place around the shaft.

“My name is Vadh,” he says.

“Bryn.”

He nods once. He uncoils from the wall. The room shifts around his weight.

“The journey is long,” he says. “And there is no path for most of it.”

He goes to the door.

I stand and sling my pack over my shoulder. One piece of paper hides at the bottom, wrapped in cloth, mine for thirteen years. Waiting.

Just like me.