Chapter 24 – Class C Inventory

“One of our newest acquisitions,” the attendant said, and there was a shift in her tone, a note of professional pride breaking through the careful neutrality. “A treatise on Sanguimancy. Appraised for Beginner to Intermediate practitioners.”

Alice’s hand hovered over the velvet cover. Sanguimancy. Blood Magic. The word conjured Florence instantly, unbidden: the girl standing in that shack with her arms at her sides and a man’s heart painting the walls behind her. The bewilderment on her face. The total absence of intent. Florence was a loaded cannon pointed in every direction at once, and she didn’t even know where the trigger was.

If she didn’t learn to control that affinity, she was going to accidentally liquefy a professor.

Alice owed the girl a life debt. Teaching her not to pop people like overripe fruit seemed like a reasonable installment.

“Sanguimancy…” Alice murmured. She looked at the attendant. “What’s the corruption index?”

Every Grimoire carried a risk. The author’s mana imprint lingered in the ink long after it dried. A Pyromancy text might leave you running hot for a week, craving salt, sweating through your sheets. Unpleasant, but manageable. The darker disciplines were a different matter entirely. Necromancy and Blood Magic were notorious for warping the reader’s mind, inducing cannibalistic urges, or simply rotting them from the inside out.

“According to our in-house appraisers, minimal,” the attendant said calmly. “The author was a scholar, not a fanatic. The text focuses on the medical and kinetic applications of the blood rather than the ritualistic.”

Exactly what Florence needed. A textbook, not a manifesto.

“Alright,” Alice said, feeling magnanimous. “How much?”

“Fourteen thousand, three hundred and thirty chips.”

Alice choked. She actually coughed, her grip spasming on the charcoal pyromancy book hard enough to dent the spine. “Excuse me?” The words came out a full octave higher than intended. “Fourteen thousand? This one is six hundred. You’ve added a zero.”

“I assure you, I have not,” the attendant replied, her wooden mask impassive. “It is a matter of supply and demand, Madam. Pyromancers are common. You can find a fire mage on every street corner in the industrial district. Sanguimancers are rare. Those willing to write down their secrets without cursing the reader are rarer still.”

She tapped the wet-looking cover. “A clean, extensive Sanguimancy Grimoire is statistically non-existent. You are paying for the rarity.”

Alice stared at the book. Fourteen thousand crowns. A furnished townhouse on the Meridian. A merchant vessel with crew. A year’s operating budget for a mid-sized firm. The number sat there in her skull, enormous and obscene, and the worst part was that she could feel herself already reaching for the justification.

She gritted her teeth until her jaw ached. “Wrap it up,” she hissed.

The attendant beamed behind her mask, the golden arrows on her cheeks catching the light. “An excellent choice. A purchase for the discerning connoisseur.”

Alice watched her mental ledger crater. Nearly eighty thousand remained, which was still a fortune by any sane measure, but watching fourteen thousand crowns evaporate in ten seconds left a physical ache behind her sternum, like a bruise she couldn’t touch.

“I need to stop shopping,” Alice muttered, clutching her purchases.

“But Madam.” The attendant gestured toward the heavy iron door at the back of the room. “We haven’t even reached the Artifacts yet.”

The door groaned open on oiled hinges, and Alice followed the attendant through, her mind still churning the arithmetic.

Fourteen thousand crowns. For a girl she’d known less than a week.

She tried to frame it as a rational investment. Florence saved my life in the woods. She stared at the back of the attendant’s immaculate dress and ran the calculation with detached, brutal honesty. Is my life worth fourteen thousand crowns?

Realistically? No. Not really.

If she were held for ransom, her father might pay the sum to avoid the scandal, but he would certainly complain about the exchange rate over dinner for the next decade.

The Artifact Vault was nothing like the treasure hoard Alice had envisioned from adventure novels. No mountains of gold, no jewel-encrusted swords jutting from piles of coin. It was a sterile, climate-controlled corridor, narrow enough that two people would have to turn sideways to pass each other. Glass display cases lined both walls, each humming with its own containment field, the combined drone pitched just below the threshold of comfort.

“Is there anything specific on your mind, Madam?” the attendant asked, her voice carrying a faint echo in the confined space.

Alice’s eyes flicked to the Shadow-Weave Cowl resting on a mannequin head near the entrance. One thousand chips. The cheapest item in the inventory, which naturally made her suspicious. If the cowl was the bargain bin, logic dictated the expensive items were where the real power lived.

“I’m just looking,” Alice murmured. “Do you have any Class B artifacts in stock?”

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The attendant paused and turned back with a polite, frozen smile. “We do possess Class B artifacts, Madam. However, the Vault is strictly Class C inventory. The Class B items are not for sale. They are reserved for House use or auction events.”

A ripple of disappointment, swiftly buried. She’d hoped to at least lay eyes on a Class B for the first time. Instead, she was browsing the retail floor.

She wandered down the row of cases, passing a jagged dagger that seemed to weep its own dark oil in slow, viscous beads, and a necklace strung with what looked like petrified eyes, each one clouded and staring in a slightly different direction. Her gaze snagged on a smaller, less ostentatious case near the middle of the corridor.

Floating in the center of the containment field was a glove. It was made of dark leather, worn and distressed, stained the color of old tobacco. It looked more like something pulled from a gutter than a display case. But the design was peculiar: it covered the thumb and three fingers only. The index finger was entirely exposed, the leather cut away cleanly at the knuckle.

Alice stopped. “What is that?”

“Ah,” the attendant said, gliding over. “The Thieves’ Glove. A unique piece, acquired from a rather frantic tomb raider some months ago. We were informed it was formed from the remains of his partner.”

The words settled in the sterile air.

“Formed from the remains,” Alice repeated, eyeing the dark, stained leather with fresh suspicion. “Raiders aren’t known for their loyalty. Did he perhaps hasten the process?”

“We did not inquire,” the attendant said smoothly. “He was selling, we were buying.”

Alice dismissed the backstory with a shake of her head. Provenance didn’t interest her. Function did.

“What does it do?”