The public auction of the taken away estates of Chancellor Malvern was conducted beneath the soaring glass round hall of the High Exchange at ten o’clock on Saturday morning. The circular trading floor was packed with hundreds of merchant bankers, foreign consuls, and guild masters, while hundreds of working commoners stood in the surrounding galleries. He watched the dissolving of their oppressor’s private empire.
Standing upon the auctioneer’s rostrum, flanked by four tipstaves of the King’s Bench carrying silver maces, stood the High Sheriff of Crown-Reach. With sharp, decisive strikes of his ivory hammer, the Sheriff knocked down the properties one by one to the highest bonded bidders: the three luxury villas on Lake Calm, the private wine monopolies of the Southern Provinces, the hereditary carriage stables, and five thousand acres of prime timberland in the Western Weald.
“Item Number Twelve!” the High Sheriff announced, his voice echoing through the glass dome. “The dark wood pleasure barge The Golden Swan, eighty feet in length, fitted with thirty brass skylights, teak decks, and carved boxwood stone railings. Tested for purity value: eighteen hundred gold sovereigns. What’s the bid?”
Sir Horace Vane, a wealthy merchant town elder, stepped forward with his velvet cap in his hand. ‘Eighteen hundred sovereigns for the High Terrace Trade ring!’
