Chapter 15 — "The Chair and the Courier"
The auction house smelled faintly of lemon oil and old paper—an odd, respectable tang that made Lucas imagine he was walking into a library for people who bought things with entire life plans attached. He had agreed to go because Sebastian said it would be "useful for character research." Lucas had assumed that meant he would be able to sit in a few interesting chairs, maybe try on a hat, and take notes. He didn't imagine an item that would redraw the city's rumor map overnight.
Sebastian drove them in silence. There was the usual polite distance between them—the kind you'd see in a pair used to moving through other people's lives without colliding. Sebastian's attention remained on the mirrors and on the crowd. Where Lucas saw an invitation-only event for collectors, Sebastian saw a coronation.
They arrived early. The auction house had reserved a small, dim room for the private lot: a single leather chair on a short dais, a placard that read simply: EXHIBIT A — PERSONAL ACCOUTREMENT, A.C. Someone had already placed a velvet rope around it, as if the chair might require breath control onlookers. A low murmur circulated. Phones were out. Cameras were out. People talked in small, measured numbers.
Lucas drifted near the chair and, with a sense of ordinary curiosity, ran a hand along its back. The leather was dry but resilient. Not what he'd expected for a "mythic relic." It had no runes, no hidden compartments. It was, in plain terms, a very well-made office chair that had seen better days.
Across the room, two new players found the event at the exact wrong time in their lives.
Tessa Quinn called it a detail job. As the SIB's junior analyst, she had been told to attend low-profilely: observe, catalog, and send a short signal if anything unusual happened. She wore a grey blazer that made her look less like a government employee and more like a person who had accepted the world and its paperwork. Up close, she saw patterns: seating charts, who arrived with what handlers, the way certain men almost didn't meet anyone's eyes.
Her job was to manage data. The chatter about Mr. Nobody had boiled into an intelligence task: compile the sources, cross-reference the bids, and forecast risk. Tessa kept her tablet face-down until it mattered. She watched Lucas—because everyone seemed to be watching Lucas—and her first impression was not of menace. It was a statistical curiosity: a locus of attention without obvious cause.
Marco Delaney—known in three neighborhoods as Squeak—had been sent by a contact who thought a small errand would be harmless: "Deliver a package and don't ask questions." Squeak moved like someone used to being overlooked: quick hands, sharp shoulders, eyes that read the seams of events for opportunities. He was not built for high-stakes discretion. He was built for eavesdropping and for repeating what he heard in louder voices.
When Marco caught sight of Lucas, he did what Marco always did—he filled in the blanks the world left open. To him, the placard A.C. became Alexander Cain. To him, the chair became the throne. To him, Lucas's mere presence was the opening of a play.
He found Sebastian first and introduced himself as if they shared a private joke. "You must be the manager," Marco said, far too loud for the corner. "I'm Squeak. Delivery. Did you know the last person who sat in that chair got a small fortune in bribes?" His smile suggested he already envisioned a future of gossip-driven profit.
Sebastian's face did not change. He nodded once, small, ceremonial. He must be prevented from making noise in the wrong company, Sebastian thought. He steered Marco gently away. Marco misread the movement as a sign of privileged access and looped his hand into a concierge's coat as if it were permission to linger.
Tessa noticed these transactions because she wrote down everything. Marco's buzzing gossip made her eyebrow lift. She cross-referenced Squeak's delivery route with recent encrypted messages; a lead appeared: someone in the east quarter had purchased an invitation to the auction and used burner credits. The buyer's pattern matched a known shell account associated with an old syndicate the SIB had closed years ago. Tessa swallowed. The auction was no longer civility. It had become a locus.
Back at Lucas's feet, a bidding sheet lay folded, pens beside it. An auctioneer in a tweed jacket explained the process in a dry voice about increments and conditions. Lucas fumbled with a pen because he liked the mechanical click of new implements; he signed his name—Lucas Cain—on a clipboard, which Sebastian insisted was necessary "for identity verification."
Sebastian watched Lucas sign as if the ink were a vow. To him, that ink confirmed what the whole underworld had hoped for. The signature anchored the rumor to a human form.
Someone in the corner murmured, not quite a whisper and not quite a rumor: "If it's him, it's an offer you cannot refuse." A man in a soft hat laughed nervously and took another breath. The laughter sloughed off like old paint.
There was a rhythm to the room: polite conversation, a little tension, the rustle of catalogs. The auctioneer began, and the first lot disappeared under modest applause. When they finally announced the leather chair as a private lot—lot A—there was a pause, a collective exhale. The auctioneer explained the provenance the way a docent might explain a fossil: belonged to a now-deceased figure of influence, recovered from a sealed office. No dangerous contents confirmed. He spoke carefully. The room listened as if to history being slightly altered in front of them.
Lucas, who had never intended to be in a contest of power, raised a small hand at the floor manager's point. "Excuse me—do they allow local payment plans?" he asked, voice small and civilian.
The question landed like a pebble on a still pond, and everyone leaned toward the ripples. Tessa made a note. Marco misreported into his comm: He has plans. He prefers arrangements. He is practical. That sentence would mutate a dozen times before midnight.
The hammer was poised. When the first bid came, it was tentative. Then larger. Then an anonymous account flashed a number that made people whisper: a seed of panic. Someone from a well-known trust tried to outbid. The room contracted.
Sebastian's throat made the smallest sound—half a prayer, half a calculation. If he rises, the circle will follow. The men in the back adjusted their jackets. The auctioneer called out an increment. Lucas, on a whim and because he wanted to see what it felt like, lifted his paddle.
$500.
$2,000.
$10,000.
On the screen, a new bidder LC-001 added: Seven million.
The room could have folded then and there. Murmurs became shouts folded into whispers. The man with the soft hat found his hand trembling. Tessa pinched the bridge of her nose and lifted the tablet so a supervisor could see the bid trail. Marco slid into a corner and started to write gossip notes with a speed that made his pen smoke.
Lucas saw numbers and thought of furniture prices. He thought of how much he could get away with on a student loan. He'd meant to be playful—a stunt for rehearsal. He had not meant to set off a market.
Sebastian, on the other hand, felt wind buffeting cannons. He placed his hand lightly on Lucas's shoulder. This is the pivot. This is the moment he summons the circle, he thought, and his fingers trembled with a faith that had become an occupation.
No one in the auction hall knew that LC-001 had been registered by a script Sebastian had arranged that morning "for privacy reasons." No one knew that social feeds would consume the seven-million bid and compress it into a hundred different headlines: Mr. Nobody Reclaims Throne; Actor Buys Tyrant's Chair?; Seven Million for a Seat. The headlines did what headlines always do: they turned a confusion into a narrative.
Lucas signed receipts, asked about delivery options, and joked about upholstery choices. He intended nothing beyond a chair that would look good in the background of a rehearsal. He would later call it "a prop with history." People would later call it, depending on whom you asked, a symbol, a threat, a promise, or an opening salvo.
Outside, the underworld's old channels sparked like embers finding dry wood. In the SIB, Tessa's supervisor called in colleagues. Somewhere else, Marco pocketed a business card and walked off humming a tune that had become, for him, a new legend.
Sebastian guided Lucas out under a flurry of practiced calm and, for once, both of them moved in the same direction but for different reasons: one for study, one for consecration.
The chair had been sold. The city had noticed. The ripples had become visible lines, and no one yet understood how they would knot.
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