Chapter 190: Six Days of Pressure II
---
Not the same events.
The same pressure.
Morning brought reports. Midday brought movement. Evening brought planning. Night brought thoughts he could not fully shut off.
On the second day, he spent hours in the auction house itself.
The building stood attached to the shop but carried a different atmosphere now that it was being prepared properly. Dust had been cleared. Chairs aligned. Curtains brushed and rehung. Display platforms were polished until lantern light reflected softly off the wood.
Mira stood in the center aisle, posture straight, voice clear but not loud, practicing the opening line for the auction while two junior staff members sat in the front pretending to be important buyers.
"Welcome," she said, calm and elegant, "to the Dawn House Auction. Today, your patience will be rewarded, your wealth will be tested, and your taste will decide whether you leave richer or merely regretful."
She stopped, frowned slightly, and looked at Sekhmet.
"Too much?" she asked.
"Regretfulness is good," Sekhmet said. "Buyers hate the idea of missing something."
Mira nodded and adjusted the wording slightly.
Auri moved through the room as they spoke, checking sight lines, corners, side doors, and the subtle blind spaces where someone could hide intent too easily. At one point she stopped beside a rear column and simply stared at it.
Sekhmet noticed and walked over.
"What."
Auri touched the wood lightly.
"This is a good place to hide a blade," she said.
Sekhmet looked at the column, then at the angle toward the stage.
She was right.
Too right.
He marked it mentally and gave orders for the drape there to be removed entirely on auction day. No deep folds. No blind shadows. No decorative nonsense that made the room prettier but deadlier.
By afternoon, they tested staff movement.
Who carried items.
Who announced them?
Who opened the side doors.
Who closed them?
Who refilled wine.
Who watched the upper balcony.
Who remained at the public entrance and who remained at the private stair.
Sekhmet had no intention of giving Iron House an easy stage to poison. The work was exhausting in the dullest possible way.
Not heroic.
Not dramatic.
But this kind of work won more wars than swords did.
On the third day, Lily came again.
She arrived later than before, carrying no pastries this time, which meant she had come for him rather than to bribe her way into his schedule. That should have felt simpler. It did not.
She found him in the auction hall overseeing the display lighting.
Mira was on the stage. Auri stood in the rear shadows. Three servants were carrying covered item stands into place. A fourth was polishing brass with the misery of a man who had offended Elena and been assigned to suffer.
Lily entered, took in the whole room, and sighed dramatically.
"You really meant it."
Sekhmet turned.
"Yes."
Lily walked down the aisle slowly, her gaze moving over everything.
The hall looked different now. Richer. Sharper. More intentional. Even without the actual auction pieces on display, the room carried that pre-storm energy of a place being prepared for greed.
Lily stopped near the front and turned in a slow circle.
"It feels expensive," she admitted.
"Mira’s work," Sekhmet said.
Lily’s eyes moved to the stage where Mira was correcting a servant’s pace by half a step.
"She is good," Lily said.
Sekhmet nodded.
Lily’s gaze then drifted farther back, to the shadows, to Auri standing nearly invisible beside the wall.
"And she is terrifying."
"Also useful."
Lily looked at him for a long moment.
"You surround yourself with useful women."
The sentence should have sounded teasing.
It did.
But there was an edge under it.
Sekhmet heard the edge.
He answered the only way that worked with Lily — without flinching and without pretending he had not heard it.
"Useless people die first."
Lily’s expression softened at once.
Because that, more than flattery or denial, was the truth she understood.
She stepped closer.
"My father still wants me to leave soon," she said quietly. "I told him no again."
Sekhmet’s eyes narrowed slightly. "And."
"And he gave me the face."
"What face?"
"The city lord’s face," Lily said. "The one that says he loves me but would still throw me into a mountain if he thought it would teach discipline."
That drew a faint smile from him.
Lily saw it and seemed inappropriately proud of herself. Then her voice dropped.
"I think he’s worried."
Sekhmet’s expression tightened slightly.
"About you leaving."
Lily shook her head.
"No. About something else."
She glanced at the room, the workers, the stage, the preparations.
"About the city. About this week. About... something."
Sekhmet said nothing for a moment.
Then, carefully, "Did he say anything?"
"No. That’s the problem."
Lily’s tone was light, but her eyes were not.
"My father hides things the way noble people always do. Calm face. Fewer words. More rules. He gets quieter when something is wrong."
Sekhmet filed that away. The City Lord being uneasy was not something to ignore. Not with Iron House moving. Not with his own problems growing under the skin.
Lily’s eyes returned to him.
"Just be careful," she said.
"I am." He replied.
"That is not comforting," she replied.
"It is if you know me."
Lily stared at him. Then she laughed once, helplessly. "That is the most arrogant thing you’ve said this week."
He almost answered. Instead he simply looked at her until she looked away first.
That was one of the few victories he ever got with Lily.
She stayed another hour, watching preparations, talking too much to Bat Bat when Bat Bat was brought down by Elena for "social exposure with strict supervision," and once nearly laughing herself breathless when Bat Bat announced to the entire hall that the forest spirit now "liked her but still feared the bats."
Then she left again. Each time she did, the room felt slightly colder.
On the fourth day, the house gained a new rhythm. The twins began training seriously.
Vera and Vela had been strong before. Chaos Rank One, good natural talent, bodies that remembered discipline even before Sekhmet changed them.