Episode 1 : The Starting Bid Is One Son

　　"Good teeth," the auctioneer said, hooking my upper lip back with a cold silver rod. "Twenty-two. Reads three scripts. Spent ten years balancing ledgers in the Duke's cellar without a single copper of wages. Housebroken, quiet, and cheap to feed."

　　I shut my mouth and tasted iron.

　　Down in the velvet-draped pit of Crow Harbor's Grand Clearinghouse, my father didn't even look up. Duke Aldric Vark sat in his custom-carved, three-Gold-Crown mahogany armchair—a piece of furniture he'd dragged all the way from the manor just so he wouldn't have to sit on public oak—putting on his famous "grieving patriarch" face for the noblewomen in the second row.

　　Beside him sat my older brother, Galen, the "Dragon Heir of Crow Harbor." Galen had his chin tilted at forty-five degrees so the chandelier light would catch the patch of golden scales gleaming above his collar.

　　Everyone in the hall thought those scales were ancient Vark blood awakening.

　　I knew for a fact they were a Tier-2 leased enchantment from the Salt-Vault Syndicate, four months overdue, coated in three layers of cheap rosemary oil to stop the edges from peeling. I knew because I'd forged the extension request myself two days before my father had me thrown into a potato sack.

　　"Do I hear ten Silver Talers for the Duke's unacknowledged youngest son?" Rosa Quill, the chief auctioneer, tapped her gavel against the block.

　　Her voice could cut through a tavern brawl at fifty paces, crisp and lethal. Nobody looking at her immaculate black corset would guess her left thumb was trembling where it rested on my iron collar. When she'd locked the shackle backstage ten minutes ago, she'd left two fingers of slack so it wouldn't crush my windpipe.

　　Professional coldness. Private regret. In Crow Harbor, regret didn't pay the rent.

　　Silence hung over the pit. Nobody wanted to outbid a desperate Duke's pride, and nobody wanted to buy a bastard who knew how to spot cooked books at thirty paces.

　　"Five Silver Talers?" Rosa called out, her eyes flicking toward the back doors. "Come now, my lords. A trained clerk costs twenty-five Copper Bits a day on the open market. At five Talers, he pays for himself in twenty days."

　　My father finally sighed—a deep, theatrical sound meant to carry to the rafters. "It breaks my heart," Duke Aldric murmured loud enough for three rows to hear, "what a father must sacrifice to keep the border garrison fed."

　　I almost laughed out loud. The border garrison hadn't seen a single copper of his money since winter.

　　Then, in the very last row beneath the unlit sconces, a man raised two gloved fingers.

　　His leather shoes gleamed like wet obsidian. He wore a charcoal three-piece suit that cost more than our family orchard, though a forgotten cardboard price tag still dangled from the tip of his curved left horn.

　　"One Copper Bit," the Demon King Valres said.

　　The air vanished from the room. Two noblemen in the third row physically slid out of their chairs to get out of his line of sight.

　　Duke Aldric's grieving-father mask cracked down the middle. "Lord Valres," my father stammered, half-rising from his gilded armchair. "The reserve price—our private understanding—"

　　"You put him on an open block without a reserve, Aldric," Valres said. His voice wasn't a roar; it sounded like silk sliding over a whetstone. "And nobody seems eager to outbid me. Miss Quill?"

　　Rosa didn't hesitate for a millisecond.

　　CRACK.

　　"Sold," she rang out, stepping two paces back from me as if I'd just caught fire. "To the gentleman in the back row, for one Copper Bit."

　　A single bronze coin flicked through the dark, spinning end over end until it landed flat on the auction block beside my boot.

　　The iron shackles around my ankles popped open.

　　I didn't run. When you've spent ten years in a basement counting other people's sins, you learn to look at the bottom of the cup before you drink.

　　Before I could even rub my raw wrists, the floorboards beneath the stage groaned. A second chain—forged from matte-black infernal iron and smelling of three-hundred-year-old vault dust—shot out from under the podium.

　　It didn't touch me.

　　It slithered down the steps, hissed across the red velvet carpet directly between my boots, and snapped like a bear trap around the gilded front legs of my father's mahogany chair.

　　"What is this?!" Duke Aldric yelped, leaping backward as the black chain yanked his prized throne six inches toward the stage.

　　Valres strolled down the center aisle, flipping casually through a ledger bound in charred leather. He stopped at the edge of the stage, tilted his head up at me, and burst out laughing.

　　"Well, this is embarrassing," the Demon King said, tapping a page smeared with dried red ink. "Nico, isn't it? Your father sold you twice."

　　I dropped to one knee at the edge of the stage, leaning over to squint at the parchment in his gloved hand. Out of sheer reflex, my eyes went straight to the bottom left corner—checking the wax residue, the tax stamps, and the secondary lien notches.

　　"Dated three winters ago," I read upside down, my pulse suddenly racing. "Pledged as primary blood-collateral for a forty-thousand-Gold-Crown line of credit. Clause Four: Unauthorized disposal of pledged collateral voids all grace periods and triggers immediate full-estate foreclosure."

　　I looked up into the Demon King's slitted golden eyes.

　　"Since he sold me twice," I asked politely, "can we return one of me for cash?"

　　Valres barked a laugh. "No refunds on damaged goods—or on under-appraised collateral. Though you have a remarkably steady eye for a boy who was worth one copper thirty seconds ago."

　　In the front row, my brother Galen's hand slammed onto the pommel of his broadsword. "Father, don't listen to this parlor trick! I'll cut the chain—"

　　"Touch that chain, boy," Valres said without looking back, "and I'll bill your lungs for the air you've breathed since Tuesday."

　　Galen froze.

　　Valres sighed, pulling a silk handkerchief from his breast pocket to dab a speck of dust off his lapel. "Here is my dilemma, Nico. Your father's entire estate—the manor, the stables, your sister's magic tower, your brother's shiny little parlor tricks—is now legally in default. I own the right to seize all of it." He wrinkled his nose. "Unfortunately, the Vark family is cash-poor, loud, and excessively fond of stabbing process servers. I despise getting blood on my cuffs."

　　He snapped the charred ledger shut and held it out toward me, spine first.

　　"So let's make a trade. I tear up the illegal blood-lien on your body right now. You walk out of here a free man. Better yet—I formally assign the defaulted Vark debt and all enforcement rights to you. You go collect my money from your charming relatives."

　　Every eye in the hall locked onto my back.

　　If I were the naive bastard my father thought I was, I would have grabbed that book with tears in my eyes and sworn eternal vengeance.

　　Instead, I folded my arms across my ragged shirt and smiled—my best, warmest, cellar-clerk smile. The one I used when a butcher tried to short-weigh the manor's salt pork.

　　"Wait a second," I said. "Before I touch that spine, let's clarify the balance sheet. Am I buying the debt, or am I collecting on commission? If I'm assuming the liability, forget it—my father owes forty thousand Crowns and the manor roof leaks. If I'm acting as assignee-in-possession, what's my cut, what's my liability cap, and who pays for the locksmith?"

　　Dead silence. Even Rosa Quill looked at me as if I'd grown a second head.

　　Valres's smile slowly stretched until it showed his fangs.

　　"Zero personal liability," the Demon King purred. "You only owe me a split of what you successfully liquidate. Seventy percent to my vault, thirty percent to your pocket. However, the ledger doesn't give you a magic map, boy. An enforcement seal only works on assets you can trace by paper, touch with your own hand, and hold against whoever tries to take them back."

　　"Sixty-forty," I countered instantly. "And on any off-book assets my father hid under false names—and I know where he buried the silverware—I take seventy percent, after deducting security wages and maintenance."

　　"Seventy-thirty on off-book recoveries, after my initial principal is met," Valres shot back, his eyes gleaming with genuine delight. "And I'll throw in the starter chain for free. Deal?"

　　"One more thing," I said, before he could close the book. "Your side has a ceiling. Principal and split together, your vault stops at twice your original loan—forty thousand in, eighty thousand out. Every copper above that line comes to me, no matter what it's buried under."

　　Valres didn't so much as blink. To a man foreclosing on a leaking manor and a three-Crown chair, capping his own recovery at eighty thousand Crowns wasn't a concession—it was a joke he could afford to tell.

　　"Twice my principal, hard ceiling, paid in full before you pocket a copper above it," he said. "And if you do find something under a mountain, boy, I'll want to see the assay. Deal?"

　　"Deal," I said, and slapped my right hand over the charred leather spine.

　　CRACK-HISS.

　　A bolt of freezing black fire shot from the book straight up my palm. I bit the inside of my cheek to keep from yelling as a single, jagged link of black iron branded itself across the back of my right hand. The ledger shrank to the size of a pocket-book, snapping onto my belt with a length of cold iron chain coiled beside it.

　　I didn't waste a breath. I vaulted off the four-foot stage, landed squarely on the velvet cushion of my father's mahogany armchair, and flipped the left armrest upside down.

　　Every piece of Vark furniture had a brass inventory plate screwed into the underside to stop the servants from pawning them.

　　I slammed my burning right palm straight onto the brass plate.

　　CLANG.

　　Spectral iron bands erupted from my skin, wrapping the heavy armchair in glowing crimson script that everyone in the hall could read:

　　[ASSET #01: DUCAL THRONE — APPRAISED VALUE: 3 GOLD CROWNS. SEIZED BY CREDITOR: N. VARK.]

　　At the exact same instant, my right pinky finger went stiff and numb—the physical load of maintaining one active seal.

　　"You ungrateful little maggot!" Duke Aldric's paternal mask shattered into purple-faced fury. He pointed a trembling finger at my chest. "Sir Grim! Guards! Cut his hand off at the wrist! He's stealing Ducal property!"

　　Steel rasped against leather. Four household knights surged into the aisle, their broadswords leveled at my throat.

　　At the front was sixty-two-year-old Sir Grim. Every time Grim took a step, his armor clanked in three completely different metallic keys—a dented pre-war steel breastplate, bronze pauldrons from the salt wars, and iron greaves he was still paying off in monthly installments.

　　His sword point stopped three inches from my collarbone.

　　I didn't step off the chair. I reached into my pocket, pulled out a stub of white tailor's chalk, and drew a crisp line across the red carpet directly in front of Grim's worn leather toes.

　　"Before you swing that sword, Sir Grim," I said, my voice echoing through the silent auction pit, "ask my father what he's paying you with."

　　Grim's jaw tightened beneath his gray beard. "Step off the chair, Nico. I swore an oath to the House."

　　"And the House owes your garrison forty-six Silver Talers in unpaid wages since November," I fired back without blinking. I pointed at the teenage squire trembling behind Grim's left elbow. "Your boy there has cardboard stuffed inside his boots because the winter quartermaster's bill bounced. Look at the seal on this chair, Grim!"

　　I tapped the glowing red letters with my boot heel.

　　"Under Imperial Clearinghouse Law, Clause Nine, when an estate enters foreclosure, unpaid soldier and servant wages take first priority over every noble claim! This chair is worth three Gold Crowns. At twenty Silver Talers to the Crown, that's sixty Talers. Even if we sell it across the street for an emergency cash discount right now, it clears forty-eight Silver Talers!"

　　I leaned forward, staring straight into the old knight's exhausted eyes.

　　"Swing that sword, and you stay broke for a man who just sold his own son for one copper. Help me carry this chair out the front door, and I pay your entire squad forty-six Silver Talers in hard coin before the sun hits the harbor."

　　"He's lying!" Duke Aldric roared, his hand diving into his coat to pull out a thick, gold-tasseled parchment. "Grim, I have a Ducal Treasury Warrant right here guaranteeing double wages once the harbor tax clears! Kill him!"

　　Up on the stage, Rosa Quill snapped her fingers once.

　　Behind her podium, a heavy oak chest bound in brass bands suddenly popped its lid open. It didn't have velvet lining inside; it had forty-two wooden teeth and a long, wet leather tongue.

　　With a heavy thud-thud-thud, the mimic chest hopped off the stage, waddled down the steps like an overweight bulldog, and snatched the gold-tasseled warrant right out of my father's fingers.

　　Chomp. Gulp.

　　The chest—Titt, the clearinghouse's prized forgery detector—licked its brass lips and let out a loud, satisfied purr. Not a single burp. Everyone in Crow Harbor knew Titt only burped when it swallowed the real thing; forged magic ink was its favorite dessert.

　　"The warrant is counterfeit, Sir Grim," Rosa Quill announced from the podium, her voice ringing with icy satisfaction. "Ink aged with vinegar, seal stamped with tallow. Worth zero copper."

　　A collective gasp rippled through the noble seats. Someone in the back laughed.

　　Old Sir Grim looked at the empty air where my father's warrant had been. Then he looked down at his squire's cardboard-stuffed boots.

　　With a slow, triple-toned rattle of mismatched steel, the old knight slid his greatsword back into its scabbard, stepped across my chalk line, and grabbed the left armrest of the Duke's chair.

　　"Fifty Copper Bits a day if you want us guarding the doors afterward, Master Nico," Grim grunted.

　　"Forty-five, plus hot soup and boot leather," I said instantly.

　　"Deal."

　　"Enough!"

　　A wave of scorching crimson heat blasted across the front row, blowing the velvet curtains sideways.

　　My brother Galen vaulted over the railing, his broadsword drawn and wreathed in roaring draconic flame. The golden scales along his neck and right forearm flared like molten brass as he leveled the burning blade at my face.

　　"I don't care what paper that freak in the back gave you!" Galen snarled, his eyes wild with the terror of a golden boy watching his pedestal crack. "A clerk with a piece of chalk doesn't walk out of here with Vark gold! By the blood of the Dragon—"

　　"Hold still a second," I interrupted, squinting at the inside of his raised right wrist.

　　The proximity of his flaring magic made the charred ledger at my belt snap open by itself. The pages flipped violently in the hot draft until they stopped on a sheet of black vellum.

　　A line of glowing crimson script bled across the page, visible only to me:

　　[NEARBY ENCUMBERED ASSET DETECTED: SUB-LEASE #884 — TIER-2 WYRM-HIDE CARAPACE.]

　　[INSTALLMENTS OVERDUE: 4 MONTHS. ANCHOR POINT: INNER SILVER RIVET, RIGHT GAUNTLET.]

　　[ELIGIBLE FOR IMMEDIATE PHYSICAL REPOSSESSION.]

　　I looked up from the page, past the roaring flames of his sword, straight into my brother's furious eyes.

　　And I couldn't help it—I grinned so wide my teeth showed.

　　"Galen," I said softly, reaching for the loose iron chain hanging from my belt. "Put the sword down. Or I'm going to peel your bloodline off in front of the whole harbor."