For what? Lila couldn’t even remember why they’d become cross with one another. Knowing Olivia, it had been about a boy. Olivia was territorial about men, which was an awful trait for a highborn. Of course, that wouldn’t matter much after the night was over. Olivia would never bed another highborn again, not unless she found a rare love match. The family’s precious little auction house might never recover after the heist, and her matron would make her suffer for it.
It was Olivia’s own fault, really. If security had been tighter, Lila and Tristan never would found a way in. The LeBeaus, and Olivia in particular, had no business running an auction house. They should have stuck with groceries and meat and mines.
“I could say the same about you, Olivia, slipping into the Wabash fundraiser.”
“I was a guest of Senator Cole.” She sniffed. “Why are you even here? I thought you were too good for these things.”
“I’m serving as my matron’s escort.”
Olivia’s gaze slid into the ballroom. “Yes, I see how well you are escorting her. You do realize she hasn’t yet arrived?”
“I’m checking the place out first, you ignorant twat.” Lila didn’t even bother to give Olivia a second glance before plunging into the room.
Opening her clutch, she retrieved her palm computer, glad she wasn’t escorting her mother after all. The chairwoman hadn’t even bothered to arrive on time for her own auction. After recovering the relatively few antiques and art pieces that Celeste Wilson hadn’t already sold, her mother had taken what she wanted, then put up the rest for auction throughout the Allied Lands. She’d strategically placed each item where it would fetch the best price or draw the most attention. Some things she’d chosen to sell in New Bristol, mostly for the show of it, mostly for the excuse of having the event. Mostly to demand that Lila join the festivities, to prove to the other families and the press that she wasn’t dead.
The Randolphs also had several dozen highborn to sell, Wilson highborn, who hadn’t had the funds to rebuy their marks from the Randolphs. It had prompted quite a bit of talk in the press about the rumored Slave Bill. If the legislation actually existed and passed the senate, then highborn from fallen houses would no longer be sold into slavery if they didn’t have enough money to purchase their mark. Failed business owners wouldn’t automatically lose their marks, either.
Lila knew such legislation wouldn’t pass, though. The highborn enjoyed the embarrassment and the shame and the show too much.
Leaning against the wall, she positioned herself near the ballroom’s entrance, turning so she had a clear view of the pacing militia outside. She then slipped in an earpiece and tousled her hair over it, dipping her gaze to her palm. The thin, flexible device had much the same computing power as her desktop, though in a much smaller package. Tapping and swiping, she hurriedly pulled up the security feeds while heirs bid on a Rembrandt. A stooped auctioneer in a navy coat tossed out number after number onstage, his words blurring together.
He ended on a number that seemed much too high. Lila glanced up at the painting on display, a painting she’d seen often on the Wilson estate during highborn parties, a ship braving a storm on choppy seas. No doubt everyone else in the room had seen it as well. No doubt that was the very reason her mother had chosen to sell it in New Bristol. The Weberlys and Holguíns would want a token to remember their ally; the Wilson family’s rivals would want a souvenir from her fall.
It seemed the rivals had won this particular round. Chairwoman Hardwicke lifted her paddle in triumph. The painting would likely be hung in her office by Monday, money traded for sentimentality and ego.
Lila turned her gaze back to the security feeds, stopping on one in particular that she’d looped and hidden from the militia. Two men stood in front of the LeBeau holding cells, both working on separate doors, both dressed in black t-shirts, matching trousers, and work boots. Knitted balaclavas covered everything but their eyes, though Lila hardly needed to see their faces to tell them apart.
The smaller, rangier man gripped his blowtorch and started severing the last bar that would free the fifteen-year-old boy inside.
The boy was not Oskar Kruger, the boy Tristan had actually gone to rescue, but Phillip Wilson. Phillip’s scowl betrayed his conflicted feelings. On one hand, some petty thief from the poorer classes might save him from many years of slavery. On the other, his rescuer was some petty thief from the poorer classes.
Leave it to a Wilson to find fault with his rescuer.
“Stop it,” Lila whispered, unmuting her mic. Only Tristan could hear her words, for he was the only one on his team who knew her identity. “There’s barely enough time to free Oskar.”
“He’s being seen to,” Tristan growled, his vowels long and rolling with a Bordeaux accent. “I’m not going to leave a child behind.”
“What will you do with him after the auction? Take him back to the shop?”
“I don’t know. Stop nagging me.”
“Then stop being stupid. Get the one you came for and get out now. You’re lucky you haven’t been caught already, what with the—”
An alarm blinked on her palm.
“You’re too late. The militia has caught on to the loop. Leave now.”
“We don’t have—”
“Get out now!” Lila opened her clutch and slipped in a second earpiece, tuned to the LeBeau militia’s audio feed.
“Baxter to Wendy, over?”
Lila held her breath.
“Wendy? Who tranqed that one?” Toxic snickered in her other ear. The young woman pumped the militia’s audio through their earpieces, audio Lila had captured before the auction.
“I think I did,” Fry grunted, not turning away from his work. Tristan broke away from Phillip’s cell and joined him. He pointed his blowtorch toward the last steel bar holding the slave inside.