The Rules :
3rd Winter, 513
By the time the boat carrying Alea landed in Ravok, she was willing to admit that maybe it was a bad idea to whine to the Captain that she was tired of being at sea. Especially since she had handed over all her remaining money just for fare to Mura, and had nothing left with which to bribe him to put up with her. She was just glad her animals were safe in the Spires. It had hurt her to leave them behind, but now she was glad of it, since all her possessions had been taken away. The only thing she’d managed to keep was a small, white bracelet, which was at this moment attached to her ankle.
Now, the teenaged girl was dressed in rags and chains, standing on a platform, glad of that small separations from the absurd mass of people below. Her hair was cleaner than it had been in years, her scalp still sore from how they yanked the tangles out. She remembered them trying to interrogate her, ask her what she was good at, but instead of cooperating (or perhaps by way of answering), she bit one of them. She promptly received a punch in the gut, which kept her out of trouble for a few chimes at least. The tattoo was less painful. She even thought the little black half-sun was kind of pretty in a way, though she had no idea what it was for.
She was currently displayed in front of a bunch of people dressed in soft clothes. Several other people had been “sold” already, and now it looked like Alea’s turn. She still was not quite sure she understood what had happened. She was not among friends, she knew that much, but the particulars of her situation escaped her.
A rather ugly man was addressing the crowd, saying bizarre things and gesturing wildly at Alea. “And here we have an exotic beauty from the far-off land of Denval!” Alea winced. The ship captain had told her kidnappers of her origin, though she would have preferred to keep it a secret. For some reason, they seemed more interested in her after that. They gave the captain a bag heavy with coin, anyway. “Shall we start the bidding at, say 300 mizas? Do I hear 300?” Alea felt slightly ill. Three hundred gold mizas was more than she’d ever seen at once in her whole life.
The auctioneer was congratulating himself on the inside: nothing like an auction to drive up the price of a slave. If he’d had to sell this one privately, there would be no way to hide her unbroken nature. He’d be forced to sell her at a discount for sure. But if he could get rid of her at an auction, he could sell her for many times what she was actually worth, and without having to suffer the expense of training her! And with an auction, the bidders were buying more than just a slave. The mere act of winning the auction would be a mark of status and wealth...as long as the auctioneer did his job right and drove the price into the sky!