The Kindling Auction

THEN, KINDLING

“You shouldn’t be here,” the smell of smoke, that particular brand of cloves and grass that the man smoked, was like a smack across the face. The man was old now, he’d always been old but now he looked it at last.

“Where should I be then?” He asks the little bone handled pipe jutting from his sagging face. He shakes as he removes the pipe, he shakes all the time, and claps it against his wooden seat to tip out what little ash remained inside. He always looked old but now he was.

“With friends,” he thought on the poor wording, “with your friend.” The old man gave him a mostly gummy smile, or perhaps he was going to hack out one his tortured lungs for a laugh. He shook his head again and slowly packed his pipe, grass and snuff spilling to the floor as his trembling hands failed miserably at the act that his brain had catalogued and performed more than a million times.

“He’s with his wife,” he doesn’t sound derisive just tired, “I wouldn’t have much to say regardless, tired conversations and old pleasantries.” He exhales a thin cloud and narrows his eyes on the other man, his eyes held onto youth and are alive with that same piercing glance he he’s always had.

“I expected a lot of vultures to come for me once I passed, but I must say James, you are quite early.” The old man grabs a cane leaning against his knees. “I’m not going to tell you where it is and there’s no information here on it’s whereabouts.”

James looks at the ruin of a man before him and the way his near translucent skin goes taut across his knuckles as he grabs the walking stick and the blade it conceals. “You’re going to try and stop me, really?

“Ninety seconds,” the old man places the pipe on a table to his left, “even at this age for ninety seconds I can fight as though I was twenty one, I can operate in the absolute realm of my prime for ninety seconds James.” He lifts the head of the cane just enough to let a sliver of steel poke out. It’s a simple statement that’s not being said here, James isn’t dumb enough to miss it.

“So you did find it then, the missing piece?” James stands, the room is suddenly untrustworthy in all regards if this man was waiting for him. He should have guessed this dusty old thing would want to be the centre of attention again. The old man smiles, however tight his eyes are he still smiles.

“I did, the piece of the baron’s old machine. Suppose we found it just in time didn’t we?” He chuckles at some faded tapestry of memory. James favours him with an actual smile and nods, closer times.

“The tiger almost had that old spider of yours up and walking again, we could hardly do with him again, now could we?” The old man shakes his head, does he still hear the roaring waters of that place he and his old foe tangled? Does he feel the cold ache in his bones, James wonders? How much does that scar hurt, he always wanted to ask him.

“No,” he reaches for the pipe and takes a small puff again and his eyes seem to water, “no we couldn’t. Why do you want that missing piece James, surely you don’t need it.”

“No I do need it. Not for what it does but for what it might be. I’ve said before, I’m sure you remember. I’ve never felt more alive than I did when I was in that chamber, shambling horrors crawling from their sepulchers to tear out our throats. It had nothing to do with the danger, nothing to do with it at all despite your friends insistence.”

“No it was that machine, there something in the steel colossus that spoke to me. A voice like music. The rest of you didn’t hear it but it was so loud, so angry. A music that shook me in my very core,” he took a step toward the old man who closed his grip on his weapon. A tremor of remorse hit James after that action, they were done perhaps they had never even started. He steeled himself.

“I need to know where the orb is,” James said looking down at the old man in his ratty old bunnit. “You will tell me now or you will tell me in ninety seconds when I’ve got my hands around your throat.”

“I’ve learned something James,” the old man drew the thin edge of steel, “this world is not the one I know. It’s fundamentally different but close enough that I’d never notice I left my old one.” The blade hissed as he swung it once out horizontally, testing the strike and finding little wrong with his form. “I wonder when I got here and I wondered if, James, it was when I met you.”

James hand clamps around the small device in his pocket, damn the old man and his riddles. He always went on about figuring things out and now he wants to show off again, let him try.

“There’s a force I’ve observed here,” he gestured with the sword at the room, “that there’s an implacable rule that keeps occurring in this place. Things come in twos,” he rattles out a sound like a cough, “there was me and my friend. The Spider and his Tiger. We were meant to oppose one another, I see that now. We would have, regardless of the course of all events, met.”

“There’s something about this new place, and I know it is a new place trust me on that James. It puts people together, it puts all of us against each other. I don’t know why. I doubt I ever will,” he scratched at his arm, “bad habits caught up to me and indeed you have the look of a man willing to kill about you.”

He rose from his seat, legs no longer trembling, his form like iron. He moved the blade through the air and James saw the spirit of a much younger man pass across the withered face of the man before him. A smirk, a pipe and the little raise of an eyebrow which told him he knew something you could never understand. The blade whistled through the air and stopped with it’s flat end pressing against the old man’s forehead.

“To the death, James,” he lowered into a practised stance the tip aiming for a point between James ribs. The younger man just snarled at the aged man with the sword and smile of a much younger man across from him. The next ninety seconds would be savage. They moved as one in a single instant, steel dashing toward flesh and then there was the sound of history.

The blade sang for James’ throat but he twisted and it simple raked across his collar, getting low he drove a fist into the old man’s side. There was a sound of something breaking and a miserable sound of pain. No time for victory as the old man drove his knee into James stomach and doubled the younger man over.

The world rocked as the back of a knobbly hand met with one of his ears and James sprawled across the floor to the ringing of bells. The old man lunged, a killing blow he would not have taken was he not sure he had James entirely beaten at this point.

James rose to one knee and his arm snapped out not to block the blade but catch it. The pain was primal as the steel bit through his palm and continued to slide between parted veins and muscle. It stopped finally, he felt the hand of the other man meet his palm as the tip of the blade grated against his teeth.

The old man was terrified, he had to pull the blade free. He had a second, maybe less, to twist the blade and sever it free but he didn’t get the second he needed. James rose from the ground, eyes aflame with rage, he dragged the elder toward him and drove his forehead into the bridge of his nose.

Another crack. A fist flashed out and another cracked cried out. The old man wailed as the younger beat him until he let go of the blade, thunderous blows rained down across his face and weak shoulders. He had a moment of reprieve when James tore the weapon free of his hand and feel to his knees, a keening scream coming from between clenched bloody teeth.

“You will tell me!” The man roared throwing the blade across the room embedding it above the mantelpiece. “You will tell me where the eyes are!”

“Lost. As you are James, lost.” The old man managed as the old man closed on him. There was no fear, resignation perhaps a bit of sadness he would not see the doctor again. He’d never make it up to him. A wish that their last conversation could have been something special rather than an argument.

There came no end though. Just panting, sounds of effort and a frustrated groan. “Not worth it. You should have followed the spider’s lead. Been lost in that river past the falls. Goodbye, don’t look for me.”

NOW

“And you knew this was here, all this time?” Natalie inquired to her partner who sat next to her in the gondola, eyes locked on the wood of the boat. He mumbled to himself, he did that often and most especially when in new places. This place was, almost certainly new. Somebody had built canals beneath the city or indeed these were flooded subway tunnels from the city this one was built above.

The whole place was just water and concrete with a few dozen hanging lanterns above the water, lighting the way for the rower at their backs to navigate the various branching tunnels by. The rower was silent, no romantic serenades though had he begun to sing one she might have had to deck him. A silent shiver of revulsion slid through her being at the concept of being intimate with the withered Conrad sitting next to her.

Conrad rather looked like something that had rather forgot how death worked and continued to make his way around despite the way his skin clung too tightly to his bones. Gaunt all over and she’d never seen him smile, face perpetually dragged down by gravity. His eyes retained some sparkle of youth despite the forest of frown lines and wrinkles that swarmed them.

“You’re staring Natalie,” he snapped not looking at her, “I can feel your eyes digging into my skull, kindly stop it.” He’d only call her Natalie and she’d only call him Conrad. Save a single instance where he called her Nat, after she saved his life. He had since insisted on being more formal and more brusque than ever before. He made no secret that he hated working with her, for her more like but it was better than prison where multiple people would kill him for his past deeds.

Conrad’s old life, as he ever liked to harp on about, was much more glamorous than this one. He indeed was something of a crime boss that did pretty much whatever he wanted and got away with it. Until of course Natalie showed up working for T.H.E.M. and caught him. He should have filed his paperwork, that’s how they always get you.

“Just tell me Conrad,” she could play that game too, “did you know about this?” She gestured to the canal tunnel they bobbed serenely down. He didn’t look up but made a small grunting sound.

“Yes. I’ve been before, I was aware of it.” He hated boats. He hated all transit. He wished people would just keep him in deep freeze and thaw him out on location it would make his brain less likely to melt from the recall. Conrad was only not locked away by T.H.E.M. because he had a peculiar ability, in a world of people with peculiar abilities. Conrad remembered things.

He remembered everything down to the finest molecular detail. He could be in a room for one second with thirty dozen others and he could describe every other person with perfect clarity, down to the perfume they wore that night. Conrad had a mental world that could recreate any scenario he was witness to and indeed manipulate to his will so long as he had the information to do so.

He felt a dull pound start in the back of his head already. He couldn’t look at anything but the space between his black leather shoes. He could look up but he’d have to remember every fire they passed- forty seven so far if his blood hound sense of smell was right- and every crack in the roof above. HE couldn’t look at water in general because of the sheer multitude of movement involved there. So the boat’s floor took up all his attention.

A fine sheen of sweat built up across his well lined face, the place hadn’t changed much since he was last here but he noticed those minor changes regardless. The boats were different used to have motors and all that. Which makes him think someone much more melodramatic runs the Sunken Auction now. Some people fancied themselves dramatists and forgot that people had places to be that weren’t on a gondola floating on a river of what, surely by this point, was mostly rat urine. At least it smelled that way to Conrad.

This wasn’t his job, he told Natalie that thirty two times exactly but she insisted their intervention here would spare the city a gang war. He just gripped but really there’s no way he can say no. He briefly lets the idea of drowning himself in rat piss water float through his mind, before the mental triggers at the word rat remind him of a rather terrible night in Kuwait with people who owed him money.

He really had to send Monty a Christmas card this year.

Natalie tugged a curled lock of black hair out of her face and turned away from her partner he was clearly not in the mood to talk. She crossed one leg over the other and regretted the motion as the sound of something clattering bounced around the tunnel resulting in all mighty clamour. Conrad’s snigger chased the sound down the tunnel for company while the rower made no comment.

Bloody thing. She thought venomously once again the outfit that gifted her with enhanced physical prowess and near invulnerability was making a scene for her. She’d made a case for removing all the jingling parts of the outfit, of which there was an uncountable number but she was rebuked in this by a few scientist types. Apparently the sounds of the various bells and crystals colliding was the very factor that invoked her invulnerability. Something to do with vibrations and the human resonant frequency. Sounded like nonsense to her but she wasn’t a scientist she was a detective. Or Private Investigator, there wasn’t a comfy term for her to fit into sadly.

“Alas it is under such terrible, nay perhaps even calamitous circumstances that we make our re-acquaintance master Lime.” The voice boomed from a small dock ahead though the figure that capably projected it was shrouded in total darkness. Natalie assumed he must have had the eyes of a hawk to see them in the limited light or at this distance. Conrad seemed to have locked up, his whole spine turning to stone.

“Natalie, kill me. Please. I don’t want to have to deal with this bloated prick.” He scooted to the edge of the boat and peeked over the edge, withdrawing a moment later when the fractal motion of liquid snapped something in his brain and caused a great sea of pain to boil behind his eyeballs. Natalie leaned over to him as he rested his chin against his chest.

“Who is it?” She inquired as the boat drew up to the small dock, a fellow wearing what looked like a thick black cassock tied off at the waist with a scarlet sash produced a lantern and set about lighting the wick within. Behind the man in the cossack, though not well hidden as a tremendous gut gave the figure away, was a faintly smiling orb of a man with teeth the colour of pearls.

“Yes Master Lime please introduce me to your newest acquaintance, it has been quite some time since last we met, I’d say forever but that’s hardly an apropos measurement of time. So I shall be accurate and say, simply, it has been almost a decade, specifically eight years, since last I met you.” The man was a verbal onslaught that much was certain.

Conrad made a sound and indicated the man with a careless gesture. “Natalie meet Oberon a very annoying individual who used to work with me.” He narrowed his thin eyes on the bulbous figure. “It’s your fucking fault I’m down here isn’t it? You set this up didn’t you?”

The sphere of a man pressed two sausage like fingers together and looked to his cossacked companion before belching a sound of disbelief. “I am, vigorously, and outrageously, not to mention dangerously, insulted at this moment in time. Your accusation has wounded me, not physically I admit but in a sense much deeper than that in turn. Th-”

Conrad rose from the boat and planted a foot on the dock, he was in the large man’s face after languid step. The old man recoiled back from Conrad to interpose the man with the lantern between the two.

“Yes or no Oberon, yes or fucking no.” Conrad hissed through clenched teeth. Oberon began to babble again when Conrad let out a wordless shout of frustration and the large man squeaked before waddling back yet further.

“Yes! Master Lime I confess I requested you, specifically you Master Lime for reasons that will soon become apparent. Please, Miss Natalie, keep Master Lime from harming me! I beg of you.” Oberon was steadily running out of room on the dock to avoid Conrad’s fierce glare. Natalie was out of the boat a moment later, the sound of her bells and gems making a racket with the big step up to the dock but thankfully they seemed to be silent next to Conrad’s raving.

“Easy Conrad we’re here officially.”

“Officially, I will murder this man if you keep me here, I will say that right now Natalie. I will kill him if you leave me alone with him.” Conrad looked serious in this threat, though he always did. Natalie stepped around her gaunt comrade her eyes never leaving his or the fire that burned behind them.

Conrad was a criminal she thought to herself often, now he was her partner. She reflected just as often that this was not by choice and that there was far more criminal in Conrad than anything else. She remembers the Chinese man from a few months ago and the awful shape his neck was in after being alone with Conrad for less than a minute, eyes bugged out and tongue near bitten through. Conrad was her partner in so far as he was kept out of jail for his co-operation.

“Yes, yes, I shall be sure Master Lime to stay as far away from your personage as the environ permits. Please accompany me to the Drowned Auction hall where you shall see why you were summoned down to this ghastly haunt. Azad if you wouldn’t mind opening the way please.” Oberon stepped aside and the man in the cossack opened a door at the end of the dock, old steel thing that looked as though it had been here since the first world war.

It led into a concrete rimmed walkway surrounded on all sides by thick iron pipes which rattled and groaned under the weight of themselves. Azad led the way his lantern illuminating the iron path ahead. He stopped for a moment by a pipe and lifted a stopper on the corrugated steel and whispered into it with a voice like silk. He spoke quickly, quietly and in words that sounded like nothing more than sand across skin. He closed the gap and looked back at the group before nodding and continuing forward.

“Marvellous isn’t he?” Oberon turned to say to Natalie. She opened her mouth to reply but Oberon was a river not easily dammed. “I found him years ago in the Sahara Desert, buried up to his throat in sand and flowers bloomed all around him. He’s not human, maybe not even a he in retrospect, I had him dug up and found out he was an ancient golem. Amazingly hand crafted by some loving and no doubt dead artisan of years past. I was attracted to him by his uniqueness and indeed took to claiming him as my own. I named him Azad of course it took near a year for him to understand that was his name and much more training to get him to understand clothing and th-

“Shut up.” Conrad rattled from directly behind Natalie. She heard his teeth clack together and the loud snap reverberated down the pipes. Oberon paled significantly and turned away quickly jowls flopping with the motion.

Natalie turned to Conrad who just looked at her through hooded eyes. They continued in silence in the tight space of the tunnel for ten minutes until they came to a set of stairs, new steel standing out from the old of the pipe, which spiralled down into the dark below flanked on all sides by more of the lanterns.

They descended for perhaps another ten minutes all their feet clattering against the spiral stairs as they wandered downward. More silence from all parties involved. The stairs terminated at another door, Conrad let out a noise of sublime hatred. Azad pushed the door open and they were met with a hundred, hundred eyes staring back at them from a hundred hundred heads.

“Miss Natalie and Master Lime I present to you the Sunken Auction house.”

The room was tall seeming to stretch the entire distance they descended, above them hung gas lamps of sizes and shapes both terrestrial and baroque. Along the walls torches warred for room to hang amid pieces of art and tapestries that were hung with utmost care and delicacy. Above in small cages of glass and steel hung things that might have been alive or might have been dead, they spied down at the gathering with hungry eyes. Some paced their cages and others sat in utter silence looking down with only contempt.

The room was packed to the very brim with people of all creeds and classes, shapes and sizes galore shared the room all facing a single small wooden stage atop which stood a petite shape of a woman and a large glass case at her side within which floated a single violet moth.

The whole place reeked of age and fire and nothing made a sound at the intrusion of the new visitors. Natalie felt her mouth suddenly go very dry at some of the occupants of the room. At the very back dressed wearing an orchid lapel was a crime boss that went by the name of Mika Campbell, wanted for smuggling of magical artefacts and extortion of creatures from the realms beyond. To his left stood Dirk Campbell, bodyguard to Mika, wanted for killing people who Mika didn't like.

On the other side of the room sat a man holding a sword and wearing nothing more than an ornate clasp on one arm and a set of fur across his...well...across his privates. He was easily ten feet tall and made little effort to mingle with others, having claimed a large section of open floor for himself and his sword, easily as tall as he was.

“No worries guests and customers, no worries are to be had here. These are simply experts on other items we have here to check against fraudulent claims made by sore losers and terrible bidders. Please Sasha continue the bidding on the Messenger Moth we will be out of here in but a moment.” Oberon waltzed ahead of Azad and simply nodded a greeting to everyone that looked his way.

“Conrad, what is this place?” She whispered to him and looked back to see her partner pale and his nose running red. He locked eyes with her and she could almost feel the waves of stress radiating off of him. He was shaking like a leaf, so much to see and his mind greedily took it all in. He was shuddering and whimpering when he pulled his thick coat over his head and tunnelled his vision down to a single point on Natalie’s back.

“The Sunken Auction,” he croaked out tasting the bitter tang of his blood grace his top lip- a thousand bloody noses past slice into his frontal lobe and behind his eyes there’s a boiling white pain. “It’s a meeting place for everyone with an invite, everyone is welcome to bid on Unique one of a kind artefacts, objects and even dying races. Open to all people, creatures and sapient life. Magic, Superpowers anything so long as you have money you’re welcome in this place.”

“Are you alright?” Natalie asked.

“No you twit, everything here burns.” He hissed at her his form shaking beneath the coat. “That one look and I know everyone and everything in this room, my brain is eating itself to calculate every little detail on the objects. Oh god I only came here twice before; both times I was laid up in hospital after an hour of being here.” He rasped something and noticed the twin pricks of red atop his black shoes.

He hates this place. He always had. He’s going to die if he’s here for more than an hours.

The clack of wood on wood echoes through the room. “The Messenger Moth is sold to the Mister Wargsbane.” A polite series of claps makes a round of the room, save a thunderous clamour from the massive figure at the back of the room. Natalie walked past the figure of Mister Wargsbane who looked every bit like an old Great White Hunter sans the explorer’s plinth hat.

They were ushered behind a small curtain and the minute they got there Conrad collapsed onto his stomach and started sucking in breath. “Hate,” he began, “everything.” He looked up from under his coat a fine twin trail of red running down to his chin. His eyes were bloodshot and twitched madly to everyone looking at him. “If you wanna keep breathing Oberon, explain right now.”

“Of course Master Lime.”

“Call me that again and I floss with your retinas, it’s Conrad.”

“Very well Conrad. Sometime ago an item went up for bid a wholly unique object, as all objects must be to appear in the Sunken Auction. This item was a painting and indeed it was wholly unique and totally unlike any other made or discovered anywhere. The object was highly contested by two bidders they warred into the thousands of thousands, and then the millions of millions and so on so forth. Eventually as is the case one of them one the right to own the object! Then we came back to fetch it and discovered well...this is the issue you see.” Oberon chuckled wetly and looked red at the cheeks.

“Out with it, I’m risking an aneurysm just standing here.” Conrad noticed Azad emerge with two large canvases, one in each hand. He placed them down and suddenly it all clicked.

“Someone made a copy.” Oberon said as he pulled the sheet away and Conrad understood why he was here.

“Oh god The Lady in Jade.” He said the words felt numb. He remembered her, a shining jewel in his mind. The crown jewel perhaps of his whole career in crime.

The painting was of a woman with jade skin, jade hair and pretty much surrounded by thickets of jade. She stood alone in a small glade of the great stone rearing all around her. She had no eyes just hollow sockets but she seemed to be looking at something beyond the canvas, the lack of eyes did nothing to lessen the feeling she could see you. She was smiling, pleasantly, perhaps at whatever she was or wasn’t looking at. It was, apparently, a relic of some long dead race of magical people. Diamond-kin or some such who all vanished in some grand Magi war.

Regardless it was the last painting by someone or other and it made it ludicrously pricey. Conrad at the height of his reign had stolen it from a small island dictator along with a fleet of the man’s priceless cars. The painting was the true prize with it he’d had what he always wanted.

“Oh god.” He said. “You want me to tell you which one is the real one don’t you?” Conrad wandered over to the paintings and stopped dead after a moment.

“Ideally yes, Conrad, that would be most helpful and your compatriot here is going to find the forger and arrest them so as to avoid blood shed. Azad was of the mind we should simply cut their hands off. He’s a bit old testament so he is but I can’t have blood drawn down here it’s bad for business and as suc-

“I can’t.”

“What?”

“They’re exactly the same as I remember them. Both are perfect. Exactly the same down to the littlest thing.” He turned to Oberon. “You have suspects. I need to see them now.”

“Of course of course I am so glad you are taking this seriously Conrad.” Oberon clapped once or twice and through the curtain came a pair of figures one Conrad knew and one Conrad did not know.

The one Conrad did NOT know was a raven haired beauty with high cheekbones and a small bird like mask held to her face via a long stick. She held it in place while her other hand busied away with a fine black fan.

“May I present,” Oberon coughed, “the lady Raven of Unusual Secrets Incorporated a group of art dealers who act as intermediaries between private individuals who do not wish to be known, as their identities are secretive matters.” Oberon noticed the way Conrad’s bloodshot eyes turned at him and he hurried along. “She won the bid.”

She nodded at Conrad and Natalie while they looked her over. There was little that needed said about her to Conrad, typical mystic lady with a bird fetish...well fetishes if you wanted to be accurate and technical. A series of rings tipped with silver rook skulls graced a few of her slender fingers and caught the light as she fanned herself.

“I won the bidding there was no reason for me to do,” she flopped the fan at the twin paintings, “whatever this nonsense is!” She rasped quickly and returned to fanning herself. “My employer Mr. Wright will be quite cross if this is not sorted out doubleplus quick.”

“Yes, yes, please Lady Raven, we will have this sorted very very soon. This fine pair are experts in forgeries and the constables, that is to the say the police and or a private officiate with the powers of arrest and they will in turn be able to sort all of this out quickly as possible. This other fellow to my right is,”

“I know who he is,” Conrad said, “I’ve seen you on the paper.” The man smiled back at Conrad the kind of smile that ought to be slapped off the face as quickly as possible. “Louis Niccals the world’s second best thief behind a miss Elastique.”

“That’s me.” Louis said with a faint smile. He wore a finely tailored white suit and had a stark white bandage cross over his face to cover his missing eye. “And let me start off by saying that’s profiling to assume this was my fault. I’ll say now and as many times as you needed. I didn’t make this forgery.”

“Lies,” The Lady Raven screeched. “He had to have made this forgery when he lost the bidding war. Unable to match with my group. Thus he made this crimethink here and expects ti get away with it! You are making no shortage of enemies Mr. Thief!”

Louis narrowed his single emerald eye on the woman. “Only one lady gets to call me that, miss and I’m afraid you are not she. Now if you pair would like to prove our innocence. I’ve a golf game to get to in three hours.”

Natalie took a step forward. “Well first things first we’ll have to interview you both. Let’s start at the beginning shall we?”