CHAPTER 103: THE SMILING MAN

I should have been grateful that the knight was leading.

Really, I should have. But he had the kind of forward momentum usually reserved for siege weapons or drunken uncles at weddings, the sort of stride that said, "If you stand in my way, you’ll either be reduced to a fine paste or you’ll rethink all of your life choices."

The five of us moved through the ruined arteries of the city, our boots slapping wet cobblestone, our lungs still rattling from the recent attempt at collective drowning.

Rodrick walked beside me, his jaw tight, eyes darting in every shadow. Dunny, bless his heart, trailed behind us, squeaking softly every time a rat scuttled by, which in this city meant he was squeaking roughly every four seconds or so.

The city surrounding us was quieter now. Not silent—never silent—but quieter, as though even the screaming and fighting had chosen to pace themselves before the storm that loomed.

We climbed toward the eastern quarter, the cobblestones drying under our feet as the stink of sewage gave way to the perfumed stench of money.

I hated it already.

We weren’t alone, of course. A pair of competitors leapt from an alley at us, eyes crazed, weapons flashing, the kind of desperate gamble made by men who had clearly mistaken us for easy prey.

The knight didn’t even break stride. He simply tilted Salem’s body into one arm and used the other to perform a gesture that looked halfway between a dance move and an execution. One fist swung. One skull hit stone.

He didn’t even grunt. By the time I’d blinked, both attackers were already sprawled, bleeding quietly into the cracks between the cobbles. Dunny squeaked louder, Rodrick swore under his breath, and the knight continued forward as if he had just adjusted his hat.

I finally snapped. "Alright. No. I’m sorry, but no. You can’t just do that—" I waved at the cooling corpses, "—and keep walking like you didn’t just turn two people into garnish. Please tell us, who are you really?"

The knight laughed, a rich, deep sound that seemed entirely too at home in the graveyard we were making of the streets. Then, just as quickly, he schooled his features back into that cheerful mask he always wore, the one that somehow suggested both deep wisdom and complete idiocy.

"A friend," he said, patting Salem’s shoulder like this was all very normal. "Is that not enough for you my lady?"

"No," I snapped, though my voice cracked halfway through, making me sound like an angry adolescent instead of the hardened revolutionary I liked to imagine myself as. "It’s not enough. You don’t just get to be mysterious, nude, and medically horrifying all at once and expect me to smile and nod like this is some charming dinner party anecdote."

The knight’s smile stretched, just a little too wide. "Then don’t smile."

I stopped in my tracks, gaping at him. "That’s not... that’s not even a response!"

Rodrick placed a hand on my shoulder, firm enough to imply that if I continued, he would happily knock me unconscious and drag me the rest of the way. "Not now, Cecil."

I clenched my teeth, swallowed the rest of my protests, and decided that fine, for now, I wouldn’t interrogate the man whose idea of triage was shoving his fist into a ribcage. But the suspicion did not die. It simply curled up in my ribs like a cold snake, waiting for its moment to strike.

The longer we walked, the fewer competitors appeared. Those who had haunted the alleys and gutters seemed to thin, as though even the desperate had learned better than to stalk the road toward the eastern quarter.

I glanced up, partly to rest my eyes from the endless parade of filth, and that was when I saw it.

A mass of hot air balloons hung in the sky like swollen stars. They clustered above the eastern quarter, tethered with ropes of fire and ambition, drifting in a display so absurdly decadent it nearly stopped me in my tracks.

"Oh," I muttered aloud, "that’s wonderful. Because nothing says ’let’s flaunt our wealth in a city on fire’ like filling the sky with enormous floating eggs."

No one answered, which was just as well, because my sarcasm was more for myself than anyone else. My eyes tracked the glowing tethers downward until they touched the streets, and there, nestled among mansions and marble arches, stood the auction house.

It was not a building. It was a declaration. Columns taller than siege towers, a façade drenched in gold leaf and arrogance, banners fluttering with every color of coin. The entire structure gleamed in the lantern-light, absurd and obscene, as though someone had told an architect, "Build me a temple to greed," and then handed them the nation’s entire treasury for emphasis.

I blinked several times. "Well. Subtlety’s dead."

Competitors and sponsors alike were streaming inside, their laughter and chatter drifting out like smoke. And curiously—strangely—no one fought. Weapons were sheathed, magic dimmed, tempers cooled. A truce hovered over the steps like perfume.

My skin prickled. "A safe zone," I whispered. "They’ve made the auction into a safe zone."

The knight led us up the marble stairs, Salem still limp in his arms. At the top, a man in a crisp uniform and a face of polite disdain bowed stiffly. "Invitation?" he intoned.

I fished out the silver coin the feathered lunatic had given me and held it up. The attendant’s eyes widened almost imperceptibly, then he bowed lower, both hands extended reverently to take it.

"Of course, my lady. This token grants you and your," he glanced down at the knights naked features, "companions...entrance temporarily. Once you leave, the safe zone will no longer apply."

"Right," I muttered. "So don’t lose my coin and don’t leave early. Got it."

He bowed again, stepped aside, and gestured us through the doors.

The hall hit me like a wave. Light, music, perfume, laughter—it was a carnival masquerading as a palace. Chandeliers spilled radiance onto polished marble floors, nobles in jeweled gowns spun across the tiles, merchants cackled over goblets of wine.

Competitors stood beside their sponsors like leashed dogs, some preening, some sulking, all displayed with the smug pride of collectors showing off their rare birds.

We stumbled in looking like the sewer rats we were—drenched, bruised, stitched together by the miracles of flesh weaving—and immediately the crowd parted in disgusted delight.

A few snickered behind gloved hands. Others laughed outright. One particularly overdressed woman took a delicate sip of champagne and drawled to her companion, "Oh, look. An unregistered mage. How quaint." Her eyes lingered on my armband. "Perhaps they’ll auction him off in the petting zoo."

I smiled sweetly and resisted the urge to stab her with her own hairpin.

Instead, I let my eyes wander past the swirling dance floor to the side rooms. Wide arches opened into theaters where auctions were already underway. Voices rose and fell with numbers, relics gleamed under glass, sponsors snapped their fingers for servants to raise their bids. It was chaos wrapped in velvet, a marketplace of ambition disguised as entertainment.

I turned back to my ragged troupe, lowering my voice. "Alright. Spread out. Find information. Look for the pen—or anything else that belongs to us. Don’t get killed. Don’t draw attention. And for the love of the gods, Dunny, don’t squeak at anyone holding a ledger."

They nodded, each melting reluctantly into the crowd. Rodrick adjusted his cloak and slipped into a theater. Dunny scampered toward the food table with the kind of determination usually reserved for religious zealots.

The knight wandered off without explanation, Salem still draped across his arms like a fainting noblewoman, and to my horror and faint amusement, some of the women in the hall began gawking at his lower regions

with the unabashed hunger of aristocrats who’d finally found a scandal they didn’t have to pay for.

Their fans twitched, their whispers hissed, and I wondered if I should start charging an entry fee just for looking at him.

Which left me. Alone. In a room full of predators pretending to be peacocks.

So I smiled, forced my shoulders back, and began to mingle. A few conversations stumbled into my path. Empty pleasantries, shallow mockery, a thousand ways of saying "you don’t belong here" without ever speaking the words. I endured, smiled, let their laughter pass over me like rain.

And then I saw him.

On the upper balcony, framed by golden light, stood a man gilded in armor so polished it seemed to hum. His hair was short, blonde, his eyes dark and sharp beneath the glow.

A smile was plastered across his face so deep it looked carved there by sculptor’s chisel, a smile so wide it must have hurt. On his arm gleamed a cyan colored armband.

A Rook-Class mage.

However, what really caught me was the cape. White, flowing, lavishly embroidered with the golden sunburst sigil of the Southern Sun Cult.

My stomach dropped.

I knew it had to be him, the high priest himself. The leader of one of the three factions, standing above the dance floor with a glass of champagne as though presiding over a mass.

He was speaking to a woman at his side, and on the surface, she looked charmed. Her lips curved, her laughter bright, her body leaning toward him as though basking in the radiance of his presence.

But I saw it.

The cracks in her smile, the tension in her hand as it twisted her fan. The way her eyes flickered toward the exits, searching, calculating. Something was wrong there.

Just then—

The woman’s eyes widened so suddenly it was like something inside her had cracked. Not the graceful widening of a lady feigning surprise, not the flutter of lashes meant to charm, but the raw, unguarded terror of prey who had just realized the teeth were already in her throat.

Her champagne glass slipped from her hand. For an instant, I waited for the brittle music of shattering crystal to pierce the air—but the sound was swallowed, masked by the man’s laughter.

A rich, rolling thing, the laughter of someone who had already counted the coins for your coffin.

Before anyone else could even register what had happened, they were there—two figures in white robes, emerging from the crowd like phantoms shaking off their disguises.

They moved with a rehearsed grace, no hesitation, no wasted motion. Their hands seized her arms with a precision that suggested they had done this many times before. She did not scream. She did not resist. She simply... vanished between them, dragged back into the curtains of the hall as if she had never been.

And the man smiled. Gods, he smiled. Too wide, too fixed, too perfect, as though the very bones of his skull had been carved to hold that expression.

For a moment I thought he would follow after her, but he didn’t. He stayed, turned slowly back toward the room below, and then—

His eyes found mine.

He looked down at me, directly at me, and I knew with a terrible certainty that he had always known where I was. That the little game of watching him had never been mine.

My curse slipped out unbidden, low and bitter, nearly lost under the swell of music. My feet moved before thought caught up, weaving me back into the bodies of the crowd. I couldn’t be the lone thread staring at the predator in the tapestry. Not here. Not now.

An attendant brushed past, and I caught his sleeve. "Washroom," I said, forcing my voice flat. My throat was dry, my pulse hammering, but I shaped the words carefully. "I need a washroom."

The man gave me a look, one of those polite-dagger glances that measured my worth in dirt stains and blood crust, then gestured with a small bow. "Women’s washroom. Down the hall."

"Perfect," I muttered under my breath, groaning aloud as if the gods themselves had written this insult into my evening. Still, I moved, each step careful, deliberate. My limbs felt heavier than they should, as though I carried not only Salem’s half-dead weight but the weight of that grin pressed into my bones.

The washroom was made of marble. Empty, thank the gods. A dozen polished mirrors gleamed on the walls, catching the lantern light and throwing my haggard reflection back at me in cruel multiples.

I pressed my palms to the nearest basin, let the water run cool across my hands, then splashed it over my face. The sting of it was grounding, dragging me back from the edge where dread had begun to hollow me out.

Breathe. Steady. He’s just a man. Just another zealot in a robe of gold and sun. However, I knew deep down that his presence here could only mean what I had already feared: the Cult wasn’t satisfied with domination. They wanted expansion. Influence. They wanted to seed their rot into every inch of this city.

The auction was just another theater for their gospel.

I leaned heavier on the basin, eyes closed. For a heartbeat, I almost convinced myself it was fine. That I was safe. That the walls of this room, for all their marble smugness, were still walls.

And then I felt them.

Hands. Heavy. Pressing deep into my shoulders, as though the weight of them could carve me down to the bone. My eyes snapped open, my head whipping up to the mirror.

He was there.

The high priest stood behind me in the reflection, so close I could smell the faint trace of incense clinging to his breath. His smile stretched across the glass like a wound, fixed, inhuman, unblinking. Not a twitch in his face. Not a flicker in his eyes. Just the smile, so wide it seemed to split him apart.

My throat closed. Words abandoned me. For once, even sarcasm was ash on my tongue.

He leaned closer, his mouth nearly brushing my ear. The mirror showed everything, the tilt of his head, the gleam of his teeth. His voice was silk wrapped around a blade.

"If you ever spy on me like that again..." His tone never rose, never cracked, but each word pulsed with venom. "...I’ll rip your fucking head off. Okay?"

The smile never wavered. Not once.

Fear hit me like a goddamn freight train, thick and suffocating, seeping from every pore. Then I nodded slowly, stiffly, the movement of a puppet held by invisible strings.

"Good boy."

His hand patted my shoulder once, almost fatherly, almost kind, before retreating. He straightened, still smiling, and without another word, he turned and walked out. The door clicked softly behind him, as though he had merely excused himself from polite company.

I stayed there for a long moment. My reflection gaped back at me, pale, wide-eyed, dripping water. My mind raced, tangled, spiraling into overdrive. The woman. The robes. The smile. The warning. What it meant, what it promised, what it threatened. I couldn’t hold it all. It spun in my skull like a storm without end.

Eventually, with trembling hands, I pressed my face once more into the water, let it sting me back into my body. When I lifted my head, I was shaking, but upright. Breathing. Alive.

The instant I left the washroom, the others found me immediately.

Rodrick’s face was tight, his hand gripping my arm with urgency. "Cecil, we need to hurry. The auction for your pen—it’s about to start."