The Auction

14 – Stone Still

Halfway back to the display floor, Curt felt his phone buzz. He stopped and opened it, expecting it to be a message from Magnolia, who so far, hadn’t sent him any information on lot sixty-four and the agent’s condition.

He hadn’t found that surprising. With it being such a sought-after prize, there was likely a crowd of people lined up to get close enough to inspect the merchandise.

The text gave a room number. It was one of the private offices on the third floor that had been put aside for people to discuss business, call their backers or bosses, or simply escape the noise for five minutes.

He walked as fast as he dared back towards the party, then took the stairs two at a time to get up to the third floor.

The door to the office was closed but opened as he approached. Carmichel, worry writ large across his face, ushered him inside, locked the door, and engaged the privacy protocols.

‘What is it?’ he asked of Carmichel, then looked to Mags, who was sitting at the oval table, texting someone with an intense look on her face.

‘She’s up to speed. We saw the agent together. Not a sim. Callington. Attached to a Welsh outpost. He wasn’t on the list because he was thought to be dead a few years ago.’

‘Get to the bad part,’ he said, not used to Carmichel looking stressed like this.

‘Do you know who Remington is?’ Carmichel asked and indicated to the spare chairs at the table.

Curt searched his memory as he sat down, trying to recall either the name. ‘I want to say I’ve heard the name, but…No?’ Carmichel held his phone out, showing off a picture of a tall, lanky man with black hair. Curt shook his head again, the image unfamiliar.

‘I will spare you the long version. He calls himself the King Under London. He’s human, but has a court of his own, minor but powerful for its size. He has a lot of ignoble acts to his name, but the thing most people know him for is-’

‘Agent snuff porn,’ Mags said as she looked up briefly from her phone.

‘Calling it that is the understatement of the century,’ Carmichel said, his voice tight. ‘The full event was a week-long atrocity.’ He looked down, swore under his breath, and lifted his head. ‘These are the thoughts in my head at this moment. First, Magnolia is seeking approval to go beyond the previously authorised maximum because it will not be enough if Remington decides to bid. Next, let me do the bidding. If he loses to me, he’s losing to a peer. If he loses to you, he may seek personal retribution.’

‘I’m happy with that,’ Mags said.

‘And stay by my side, both of you. Don’t give him an opportunity to mess with the Agency.’

Mags picked up her phone as it buzzed. ‘Twenty per cent,’ she said, disappointment ringing in her voice. ‘That’s as far as they’ll go. Callington is…a low-priority to get back, apparently.’ She cracked her knuckles, then tucked her phone back into her clutch. ‘We’ll follow your lead,’ she said to Carmichel. ‘I think it starts in fifteen?’

‘We’ve got a table reserved,’ Carmichel said. ‘And… We’re just preparing for a worst-case scenario. He could just be here for the wings or some other knick-knacks.’

‘We’re not going to be that lucky,’ Curt said darkly.

They left the office as a group and made their way into the theatre hall that had been set up. The theatre’s main floor had two columns of six-abreast seating, separated by a wide aisle. There were several standing tables to the edges, most of which had little “reserved” markers.

And above, on each side, were box seats.

Carmichel pointed to a set of stairs, and they entered a small box quite a ways back from the stage. Compared to the standard seats below, it was quite a step up, but of the boxes available, it seemed to be on the lower end of the scale.

Which, for them, was probably perfect.

It meant they were out of sight, out of mind for most of the bidders, and in a much better position if they needed to make a quick exit.

A PA clicked on, and a pleasant, cordial voice informed them that things would start in five minutes.

Carmichel played with the tablet supplied with the box, which listed all the items and would facilitate the bidding itself. There would be no theatrics of waving ping-pong bats or winking at the auctioneer.

When he was done, Carmichel passed the tablet along. A lot of the items were being hit with initial bids, something that would hopefully hurry along the process as each piece was announced and shown off.

It was strange. He’d imagined shouting and heated debates. People shouting insults about generations past and threats against generations to come if an item wasn’t won.

That…increasingly didn’t seem like it would be the case.

But only time would tell.

‘Kallabrae.’

Curt snapped his head up, alert and scanning. ‘What?’ he asked, the word dying on his lips as he saw it. The lanky man from the photo, the one who was making Carmichel as tense as a guard dog.

Remington walked up the ramp on the side of the stage and approached the podium.

‘Good evening, treasured guests of Amain Peo Mona.’ Peo Mona, Hoyt’s fairy name. ‘Hoyt has been my friend for as long as I can remember. I was a Liars foundling, and he saw my hunger. Saw that I intended to exceed the circumstances of my beginning.’ He slipped off his jacket and handed it to a black-clad assistant standing behind the curtain at the edge of the stage. ‘I would not be who I am without him.’

Something about Remington’s shape changed, and Magnolia’s nails digging into his arm meant she’d worked it out just a second faster than he had.

Beautiful, glorious angel wings rose up behind Remington, extended to their full width, then retracted, folded and flat against his back, the tips just barely skimming the stage floor like a cape.

‘Cooper’s wings,’ Carmichel said, ‘they’ve got to be Cooper’s wings. The Remington Tapes, the wings- It shows them being taken, but not what happened to them. This- No one knew this. He’s making a moment for himself.’

‘We had a pact,’ Remington continued. ‘Whichever one of us died first, the other would care for their estate. The items I present to you tonight are those that I think will be best appreciated by the homes and hearts of others. He was generous with my inheritance, so I am not your competitor tonight, just someone who wishes to share some stories and raise funds for his family.’

‘Things don’t go this well for us,’ Mags said, ‘what’s the catch? If he’s not competing for Callington, then we’ve got a chance at getting him home.’

‘It’s a hole in your boot,’ Carmichel said. He saw their puzzled faces and then smiled. ‘Something that is not necessarily a problem right now but will be a problem later. He’s never been quiet, never been satisfied with the power he has. Telling us he’s had a significant inheritance and showing off…those, he’s telling people to get out of his way. You’re lucky, he’s half the world away from you, but he’s going to be a problem for someone.’

The first few items came and passed with no real fanfare.

Remington would introduce the object, then an auctioneer would facilitate the bidding process, called final bids, and congratulated the winners.

Curt let his eyes scan over the crowd. He saw faces that he’d passed once or twice on the display floor, saw Francis and Magpie sitting in another box, on the opposite side of the theatre to them and closer to the stage. He saw-

He blinked to refresh what he was seeing, to take it in with new eyes. He was good at picking out when something was wrong, when something didn’t fit. And he’d seen something that the back of his brain had picked up on. Now he just needed to figure out what it was.

Carefully, he retraced where he’d been looking, allowing himself to sit on each face for just a moment, to wonder if he’d seen a flash of someone’s phone or noticed some insignia that had triggered some bit of study he’d done or-

In front of the stage, there was an open door that led to some behind-the-scenes area, dressing rooms or waiting rooms or something. A group of assistants and stagehands milled there, some with clipboards, probably arranging the next auction items to be brought up. Another helped a guest with their bidding tablet.

And towards the back of the crowd was a man in a simple, fae-cut suit, plain in a way that meant he was either hotel staff or “the help” part of a guest’s entourage. Silver hair and a silver beard, there was something familiar about the man.

Curt pulled out his phone and opened the file of all the missing agents. He scrolled right past the five that had been their hopes for this evening and went deeper back to the list of people who – like Callington – were believed to be KIA, but there was no proof.

Agent Bekker. Another Dutch agent. Missing even longer than Astrid, believed dead for the better part of five years.

Curt looked between the photo – the standard Agency ID portrait, flat, emotionless, dull – then back at the man standing with the assistants. Whoever was standing in the relatively shadowed part of the theatre was hard to make out, and if it was Bekker, he’d made some changes to-

He blinked and looked at his phone. The flagship phone that boasted about having one of the best cameras on the market.

‘Carmichel?’

‘Yes?’

‘Hold up your tablet and sit forward a bit. I need you to block a line of sight for me.’

Without question, Carmichel adjusted his posture. He held the tablet up and placed a look of great interest on his face as though winning the current lot – an antique suit of armour – was the most important thing in the world.

Curt leaned back and to the side a bit, opened his camera, and zoomed straight through the gap between Carmichel’s body and the tablet. It took a moment for the focus to land on the right person, but as soon as it did, he held down the shutter button and took a dozen rapid shots.

Quickly, he dropped the phone into his lap again and nudged Carmichel with his foot, telling him it was okay to relax.

Carmichel stayed in position, though, until the winner of the lot had been called. He relaxed back with a perfectly-acted look of frustration on his face.

Curt opened the last photo from the set and adjusted the frame so that the target’s face was dead centre. He flicked between Bekker’s profile picture and the photo. If it wasn’t the man himself, it was either a coincidental doppelganger or a sim.

If it was him, Bekker looked a little older than his photo, which wasn’t unusual for fallen agents. They still tended to live longer than humans – if they stayed out of trouble – but they no longer had System-granted immortality.

He’d also changed his hair from sandy blond to silver fox and added a beard, which had changed his look drastically.

‘Talk, O’Connor,’ Mags said as she leaned into his space.

He angled his phone towards her, flicked between the images, and handed it over.

‘I said things don’t get to be easy for us,’ she said. She changed the position of the photo and zoomed in on Bekker’s suit cuffs. There was something that he’d dismissed as simple decorative embroidery, black stitching on the black fabric. ‘That’s Remington’s court crest.’

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Chinthor

One more example to prove the point: This Curt backstory/sidestory is DELICIOUS 😋

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