Sado stood in front of the auction block among the crowd of buyers, at his side was a young guard who kept looking up at him out of the corner of his eye. “If you keep looking at me like that, soldier, I’m going to start blushing.”

The young man himself blushed instead. “I’m sorry, my Prince, it’s just, I’d never seen you up close like this until now.”

Sado raised his white numbered paddle from the crowd, “Fifteen coppers!” He said, looking up at the young man who hung his head in shame, wearing nothing but a loin cloth and a leather collar, the sandy haired man was barely more than a boy.

“Do I hear twenty…?” The dark elf auctioneer shouted. “Once! Twice! Sold to number forty-two!”

The young man was led aside, he shuffled aside into the holding area, his chains rattling faintly.

“It shames me to be seen like this, if you want the truth. Seeing me up close doing, doing what I am, it isn’t what I wanted.” The Prince added. Admittedly, he didn’t look terrible, with simple black attire with a white triangle jabbing from shoulders to waist, it was clearly servant clothing for some wealthy party’s house.

The young man lifted his chin, revealing his iron collar. “You don’t only speak for yourself. I lost my mother and my brother in that war, my Prince. She was caught outside the walls, she gave me my little brother, had me take the horse and ride. I made it inside with him just minutes before the gates shut, and I never saw her again. When the walls fell, I was at the last line, my brother was still in the outer zone, I don’t know what happened to him either. I offered to come with you… hoping he’d be here.” The Prince looked down at the young man out of the corner of his eye, red hair, firm, strong shoulders, strong body, a young buck in his prime in most respects.

“That’s not all, is it?” The Prince asked as the next slave was brought up the stairs with the sullen trudge of those who had no hope.

“No…” The young man said with a blush, “I wanted to see what kind of man you were up close. If this mattered to you, if we did, or if I lost everything in a doomed fight for someone not worth fighting for.”

‘How do you find me?’ The question came to mind, but before the Prince could ask, the walking dead shuffled onto the center. As he watched the next stage of the auction unfold, he put the question out of his mind.

The slender dark elf moved beside the young woman and held her arms up, a hand at her hip and one at her shoulder. She wore the same loincloth as the man before. “This one was caught under arms at the battle of the Komestran field, just before the siege. What’s your name, girl?”

The straw haired woman answered with unhappy timidity and closed eyes, “Clyma.”

“And what’s your age and specialty?” The auctioneer inquired.

“Nineteen, and I was… I was a messenger, sir.” She said, her hands shifting at her side, wanting to cover up, but unsure of the consequences, her hands moved up and down before finally folding in front of the loincloth.

“Anything less than a silver for one who can ride, would be robbery!” The auctioneer shouted and waved his hand out melodramatically.

“Two silver!” Prince Sado kept his head down and the paddle up, the sea of faces around him, some in competition more earnest than others, drove her price up to five silver after a minute, before he closed the bidding with six, and none competed further.

So it went for the Prince of Chains, hour after hour, as the crowd of people collected their stock and departed. By the end, Sado’s purchases were overflowing beyond the holding area, slowing the auction down while guards were rousted up and an impromptu one was made of hastily bought rope and borrowed chairs from a nearby establishment to bind it to.

When the sun began to set, and Sado saw up close over a hundred of his soldiers in half rusted iron chains, cheap, used leather collars, and loincloths, all staring hopelessly at the stone ground of the victorious city, he dropped the paddle from nerveless fingers and stared through empty, hollow eyes.

“My Prince?” The young man asked and reached out to touch his shoulder, he paused his hand halfway there, then went the rest of the way.

Sado felt the touch on his shoulder, registered the faint pressure, but he didn’t hear the voice, just a roaring in his ears like the horn that sounded the last charge of Komestra’s remaining defenders at his back.

“I never saw.” He said through barely moving lips, the faint whisper so small that his bodyguard heard nothing. Occasionally one of the young men or women who stood listless in the improvised pen, would fall to a faint crying, but it was few, too few. ‘Prince of Chains… that’s what she called me, this is what she meant… this is why the Mistress had me come here…’ The sea of faces from his city was a mere puddle compared to the whole of them, and yet looking at it at that moment, he saw the true scale of his failure.

“I didn’t see… I didn’t know…” He whispered to nobody in particular with haunted eyes as a part of the proud Prince died like the light in his eyes when he was first knocked unconscious near the end of the last battle. He recalled the brutal words of his ruthless mistress, the obedience of the former Lady Kaiji.

“My Prince…” The young man asked gingerly, drawing closer to Sado’s back and shaking him lightly as the well dressed dark elf in bright and flamboyant attire approached his front with a congenial smile on his face, a hand extended out holding a large sack.

Sado shook himself out of his daze.

“...And since this is for the Duchessa Aiwenor, one of the best customers of the Lur’gin company, we’re going to offer a special discount of three percent off every purchase, five percent off of any battle capture. Komestrans make great slaves as it turns out, but you know, people can still be skittish about buying former warriors. Even if they are only Komestran. So she’s doing us a great service by buying so many former fighters, even with the glut of stock on the market.”

The Prince saw only white before his eyes as he listened to his people spoken of in the way they were. He felt his pulse race, his fingers clenched tightly around the coin purse, he felt the pressure turn the tips white, and his jaw mimicked his fingers in that it clenched with anger he could not quell.

The bodyguard however, had a better sense of murder in his presence and snatched the pouch from Sado’s grip and stepped in between the fallen Prince and the auctioneer. “Here you go, my Mistress no doubt will thank you for the bargain you offer, and the chance to do business with you again!” He shot the words out like a ballista bolt and bowed deeply, accepting the document with the roster of names for the acquired labor force.

It was a sullen Prince Sado who ordered the wagons forward, and watched as one by one the pride of Komestra climbed into the back and sat down, slumped forward and silent except for rattling chains.

When he got in with his bodyguard and the wagons lurched to a slow forward roll, someone finally asked, “Where are we going…?”

Prince Sado, turned his half closed hazel eyes up from the floor of the wagon to the one who spoke, and answered. “To someone who might not fail you the way I did.”

He said nothing more, not for the rest of the way back.

Priceless stood with her head held high for the first time in her life. Her eyes shone like stars and she walked with her hands folded demurely before her. The steps she took were slow but steady as she tried to imitate the grace of her lover. The bustle of the city in full swing was far from the most comforting of environments in all but the best conditions for her, but within minutes, she beheld a brand new world.

‘They move aside for me… they stare at my throat where the purple rests and look at me like I am the one I am bound to serve!’ She felt the rush of excitement that bordered on sexual excitement and her walk changed.

In the order of walking within the city, anyone could use the road, but free people tended to use the sidewalks, and in that space they used the center. If you were anything less, you stuck to the edge or went into the more dangerous street.

Priceless had walked close to the edge, but as more and more stepped aside to avoid any hint of getting in her way lest rumor or word come by even the smallest chance to the force behind the collar. She looked down at the sidewalk, the edges where she walked were the filthiest, where debris were brushed aside or splashed waste came to rest between cleanings. ‘My boots are dirty… the boots given by…’ She brought up the memory of the face of wrath that carried her bodily out of hell.

She stopped in place and stared down, willing her boots to clean themselves, and they defied her wishes. She stared from their smooth dark surface and the faint hint of grime that had gotten on top of them because of where she chose to place her feet in the path to her destination, and cursed quietly for a minute more, before she raised her foot, and stepped forward, not straight ahead as she had, but to the center of the sidewalk. Her shoulders squared and her eyes went straight ahead. ‘I will not shame a Goddess!’ The words screamed inside her head and her shining eyes were visible to all.

Finding the registration location was easy enough. She went to the place where she’d been held the day her mistress bought her. A small building next to the warehouse, thin, really only wide enough for two to pass abreast, stood there and was very drab and dull relative to the rest of Pas’en’s architectural interests.

A single window sat next to the door, with a small shelf of simple smooth polished and light colored wood between the outside and the inside. A brass bell with a dark wooden handle sat there, attached by crude brown twine to a nail in the window frame. Priceless stared down at the bell like it was a snake coiled to strike. She looked around, she drew no notice, it eased the beating of her heart, she looked at the bell, raised her hand to do the impossible and ring it.

She lowered her hand and looked within. Two men sat with their faces buried in documents, behind stacks of yet more of the same. They were oblivious to her. She reached out again. ‘Ring it! Ring it you coward! You’re just running an errand for your mistress! It’s not a big deal, just an ordinary thing…’ It was a desperate lie, twice her hand darted out and grasped it, and twice she pulled it back just before it could touch the smooth dark polished handle.

‘They fought for you… you took a beating for… for both of them… you can do this!’ She gritted her teeth, took the bell handle in a shaking hand, raised it up, and rang it lightly.

It didn’t clang like those of the bucket brigades that would contain blazes until mages could respond, it was barely louder than the little silver bells that dangled from the nipples of the most exotic courtesans within the parlours of the elites. However, to her ears it was thunder.

A waifish, wrinkled old man with a hunched over back and a weak, slow step approached. His bald head had wisps of white hair still clinging on, and worse, combed over like he thought he could fool people.

“Yeah?” He snapped, and Priceless’s heart quailed briefly as she set down the bell.

“I-I need the sale locations of these slaves, sir.” She said politely and drew the small sheet from the satchel at her side, then laid it down in front of him on the flat board between the two of them.

“It’ll take about six weeks, three if you pay for a rush.” He muttered and reached for a clipboard hanging off the inside of the wall. “Fill this out and we’ll…”

Priceless raised her head unconsciously to follow his rising hand, and he stopped in mid-reach.

The old man squinted noticeably and asked, “I don’t know you, what tag is that..?”

“The House of Duchessa Aiwenor.” More power passed through her words than she anticipated, and rather than lower her head again, she held her chin high. “She’s ordered me to acquire these two ‘immediately’." The subtext of her words, that the duchessa orders ‘you’ to find them immediately, was not lost on the old man. He slowly drew his hand away from the clipboard and took the paper up with the care one showed to a newborn babe.

“Just… ah, yes, just a moment… voice of the Duchessa…” He turned on his heel, slowly, but fast for a man of his age, and walked in the stiff way that men with a lifetime of sticks up their asses walked when they were not used to being in a hurry for anyone. A steady, quick shuffle that sent an unpleasant scraping noise to Priceless’s ears.

She kept her head held high and waited, doing her best to ignore the furtive exchange between one old man and the other before a pointed hand was thrust in her direction, whatever the first had said to the second was effective.

They went to a wall of drawers, and a sense of morbidity came over Priceless. She looked within more closely, two abreast was generous before. In truth with the drawers, only one could move with ease, papers were scattered about and sticking out of stacks of folders, paperweights of cheap crystal or rocks were so numerous the place might as well have been a mine.

Chaotic as it seemed however, the two knew their business, and first one, then another paper was ripped from a drawer into his hands. He took up a cheap piece of blank paper, looked over to her out of the corner of his eye, then thought the better of it and took one of finer quality from a different stack. He snatched up a quill from ink and scrawled some information across it, then returned to the window and slid it over to her as if she were the coiled snake about to strike. He bowed politely before speaking in a creaky voice that might once have been sycophantic in his youth. “Voice of the Duchessa, we’ve found the ones you’re looking for. I’ve written the names of their owners, the address they work at, and the amount paid for them on this document to ensure that your mistress is not cheated. Oh, and… please don’t tell her it took so long.” he smiled a shaky sort of way than was more nervousness than age, and backed away slowly.

Priceless’s eyes shone brightly as she took the paper in hand, and she flashed a toothy smile that drew a widening to his eyes with the way she seemed to glow. “Of course, my mistress will only know that you were pleased to help her servant with this task, but might I suggest… your bell is very soft, and the street is very busy, maybe get a louder one.” She winked, informing him of a joke that only she understood, and she walked away on clouds of her own daydreams, leaving an old man scratching his head over a mystery he would never solve, about a joke he could not understand, and quickly forgot.