The bell's quiet note still hangs in the air when the man in grey decides to win by walking.
He steps past the rope with a crisp little smile and reaches for the cracked goblet. His fingers brush the tag.
Tamsin is there before the string even sways. She catches his wrist, calm as you please. "Hands off the stock."
A dwarf coughs and plants the butt of his axe on the floor. An orc unfolds his arms and shakes his head once. The room tilts toward Tamsin without moving.
The man in grey tugs his wrist back, offended that wrists could be owned by gravity. "By the authority of the Guild of Standard Appraisers," he says, louder now, "I will be impounding these consignments for valuation."
"You can read the board," Tamsin says, not changing volume, "or you can have a drink. Those are your choices."
Lyria steps in without stepping close. She points to the rope, to the tidy columns on the ledger, to the rules that sit neat and polite on the wall. She does not raise her voice. "You are welcome to observe."
The man in grey looks at the rope as if it has made a personal error. His assistants angle toward the cellar door. Colin slides between them and the stairs with a smile big enough to make room where there is none.
"Careful," he says lightly. "Lots are tagged and logged."
He reaches for the goblet again, a quick snatch. Tamsin takes his hand without looking this time, a small correction. "No."
"Ugly bell," she says, not quite under her breath.
The bell chimes a neat, pleased ding. A few patrons laugh. The sound does something small and complicated to the man in grey's mouth.
He straightens his coat in a way that suggests the coat failed him. "You will be shut tomorrow," he says. "I will return with a writ and a guard."
"You will find a rope and a board," Tamsin says.
He scoffs, which in this room sounds like someone scraping cutlery wrong, and leaves with his assistants. The door closes on the last of his unhappy face. The tavern exhales in one piece. Someone claps once. Edwin's chicken makes a sound that might be a laugh if chickens did that.
"Right," Colin says, clapping once like a rehearsal is over. "Back to work."
The day rolls forward like a barrel on a gentle slope. No guards, no stamps, nothing but a rope and the three of them and a crowd that keeps deciding to be bigger.
Colin talks until his throat warms and then keeps talking. He borrows chalk from a boy to fix the poster outside when a corner curls. He puts a little crown on the O of Auction and decides it helps. He moves through the room the way a man moves through a garden he is not sure he owns yet, touching every plant like it might say yes.
Lyria takes names and sets reserves until her neat stacks of slips look like a small city wall. She explains the terms three times and in the same way all three times. She gives the boot boy two coppers for lunch without making a speech. He tries to refuse. She pretends not to hear. When he thanks her too loudly, she nods once and writes Historic boots in a hand tidy enough to make a priest jealous.
Tamsin keeps the drinks moving and the potato room filling. She can carry three tankards in one hand and still turn to put a pickpocket back into his own pockets with a look. When Milo tries to help by lifting a crate, she flicks it out of his fingers with two and says, "You tell stories. I will carry boxes."
Milo rehearses beside the rope. He speaks like a river during rain. "So I was on the first floor and the corridor went left and I went left because right smelt like lizards and then there was this heap of bones and the bones were fine at first and then one moved and it was not a bone actually it was a slug with an ego, you know the type, and I thought, that is art, and then the goblin helm was just there looking at me like a disappointed uncle so I said excuse me and it worked, you would not believe how often excuse me works and then the ring flashed once and then it sulked, which I respect, and then..."
"Breathe," Colin says.
Milo breathes. The bottle slug winks, or maybe that is the light.
By late afternoon the chalkboard reads, bold and sure: Auction tomorrow, noon. The letters look like they will still be there in a year. The crowd thins to the hum of a tavern that has had a good day and will have another. The smell is soap and chalk and hope and stew. Colin can feel the shape of tomorrow like a coin in his pocket, warm from the touch.
Hooves clatter in the lane as the light turns honey. The door opens with a draught that brings the evening with it. Sir Bramble arrives as if the room has been waiting for him. Two retainers follow in tidy livery, their faces set to respectful and their eyes busy.
"Master Colin," he booms, moustache ready to bow. "I hear there is genius at work."
"You heard correctly," Colin says, as if this is a simple fact. "Welcome to Three Lutes."
Bramble surveys the rope as if it were a parade. He pats a table like it is an old friend. He leans toward the rule board and nods as if he wrote such rules himself and found them wise. One retainer takes notes. The other stands like a polite coat rack.
Lyria drifts to the ledger the way a cat drifts to a warm patch. She keeps the book between Bramble and the lots without making it look like she is doing that. Tamsin tidies things that do not need tidying and manages to be between Bramble's hands and anything fragile at all times.
"Show me something splendid," Bramble says, clapping once. "Something that will make lesser men weep."
Colin lifts the goblin helm with both hands and holds it to the last of the sun. The dents catch the light and become a story.
"A piece with a journey," he says. "Field tested. Honest. The kind of thing you put on a mantle and never dust because dust will not dare."
Bramble hums a little hum that means he likes being the person in the room who is meant to like things. "Mm. Courage in metal."
"The right guest will try it on," Colin says. "The others will admire that guest for weeks and possibly change their tailors."
Bramble smiles at that, a small, satisfied curve.
Colin sets the helm down and unwraps the glow rock without fanfare. He dims the nearby lantern with his palm and lets the evening light do the work. The veins inside the stone collect the last rays and hold them for a breath. A few people nearby notice. Bramble notices because he wants to be the sort of man who notices.
"A piece for a mantle," Colin says, soft as if he is telling a secret and not just saying what he has already decided. "Taste with a hint of danger. It looks better in the hour before dinner."
"Dinner is when the important guests attend," Bramble says, pleased. He gestures at the bottle slug with his cane. "And that artistic object."
"An icebreaker," Colin says promptly. "A conversation that begins in disgust and ends in memory. No one forgets a party where the table talked back."
The nearest retainer coughs into his glove and writes Icebreaker in small careful letters.
Bramble strolls the rope like a general on parade. He nods to the copper rings and makes a face at the bent knife because bent knives have insulted him in the past. He peers into the basket where Margaret the chicken sits like an offended duchess and lifts his eyebrows. Margaret stares back. He bows. She does not bow.
"And you will sell these tomorrow," Bramble says, the words already large in his mouth.
"Open to all," Colin says, and makes open sound like a privilege. "Noon. Seats to whoever arrives early and shouts best. If a man wished to outbid a rival in front of a friendly crowd, it would be an excellent place to do it."
Bramble draws himself up as if he can feel a rival forming out of thin air behind him. "I shall attend with a proper purse," he declares. "And perhaps invite a certain lord who needs to learn the sound of surrender."
"We love a lesson," Colin says. "Tomorrow, then."
Bramble turns at the door, the evening catching on his moustache and making it look like a small flag. He gives the room a patron's smile, the kind that says he will tell other people what he saw and they will believe him because he wants them to. "Very well," he says. "I will come back tomorrow."
He strides out into the honey light. The retainers scramble to match the stride and almost trip on each other's pride. The door swings shut on the last of the sun.
The bell gives a small, pleased chime all by itself.
Tamsin breathes out and leans both hands on the bar. Lyria caps the ink and stacks the slips into perfect towers. Colin looks at the chalkboard and sees the O with its crown and decides he will keep it like that.
"Tomorrow," he says to no one in particular.
"Tomorrow," Lyria echoes, with the smile she only lets out when the columns add up.
Tamsin nods once and flips the ladle in her fingers like a coin. "Tomorrow," she says. "Bring a broom."