Page 277 of Seer Prophet

The thought looped. It kept him calm.

He couldn’t look at Dalejem at all.

He could barely look at any of them. At this point, he was having to fight not to scan for her, or do anything that might ignite the telekinesis.

He knew the difficulty he was having with his light hadn’t gone unnoticed. He’d caught nervous glances darted his way from other seers on his team. Sharing proximate space with them in this claustrophobia-inducing basement didn’t help.

They were worried he might lose his shit.

They saw what was happening to his light. They glanced at him warily whenever sparks flared brightly enough off hisaleimi. Even as Revik thought it, Surli frowned in his direction, in the same half-second it took Dalejem to give him a worried glance. Chinja’s eyes reflected nerves. So did Hondo’s.

Revik had trouble maintaining eye contact with any of them?not like most tried.

His gaze returned to the raised wooden platform at the far end of the room.

It helped with the claustrophobia to focus there.

It gave him something else to think about, and a reminder that doors lived in the walls of this dimly-lit grave, even if not in easy distance, considering how many people stood between him and the nearest exits.

On the platform, bright lights trained on a row of Asian seers wearing sight-restraint collars and little else. Most were young, but not overly young. Most looked to be at least a century in age, but none more than several hundred years old. Most did not look to Revik like infiltrators, even in potential, although he’d heard the auctioneer describe them as such.

Of course, Revik couldn’t use his light to confirm that for sure.

Still, he wondered how carefully buyers checked the merchandise for claimed rank.

Revik and his team stood in the furthest, darkest corner of the auction floor, across the entire expanse of the rough-hewn space. They were as far from the stage as they could possibly get, and likely would have to shout, and loudly, to bid on merchandise themselves.

No physical surveillance lived in this space, nor would it, Revik knew.

Even here, in Menlim’s new world, public impressions still mattered.

For now.

Compared to the glimpses Revik had gotten of the city so far, the slave market was old, primitive, and dirty as hell. Even the outside of the building reminded him of something from centuries past. It made a stark contrast to the moving sidewalks, solar-powered streets, semi-organic trolleys, false skies with their misting sprays to keep out the worst of the desert heat, and countless holographic images wrapped around skyscrapers.

On the way here, Revik counted seven shopping malls from the train, each of which appeared to take up several blocks. Those malls had hotels between them and business parks. Every segment connected with outdoor gardens, swimming pools and sculpture gardens, in addition to rows of high-end, free-standing kiosks and high-speed transport.

Down here, the floor was a cement slab.

It wasn’t dirt, but a half-step up from dirt.

Overall, the feeling the space evoked was the same as what Revik remembered from other slave markets he’d visited over the years, most of which had been during the previous century. He’d come across similarly-styled markets in Vietnam and other parts of Southeast Asia during the war, when he’d worked for the Rooks in the 1960s and 1970s.

They all sold essentially the same merchandise.

Mid-ranked, adult male seers tended to be the most common of those commodities.

Revik felt another ripple of nerves from the dark-skinned Stanley, right before he glanced at Revik with a small frown.

“I don’t think she’s here,” he said, reluctant.

“Where else could she be?” Chinja glanced at Revik as well, but managed to be more subtle about it. “Are there other markets? Other places they might take her for such a sale? Do they stagger the sales, or sequester some of the merchandise in clean up or skill assessment before offering them in open market?”

They were good questions.

Revik continued to struggle with his light as he listened for the answers.

Apparently Surli and Stanley thought they were good questions, too, given the way they looked at one another.

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