The Slave Market
Slaves are sold constantly in every city. Most sales are unremarkable transactions in a market building. A few are events.
The houses and the guild
A slaver house buys, holds, trains, and sells slaves — a business like any other, living on its reputation, because a buyer misled once does not return and tells everyone. An auctioneer guild runs the sales themselves. The two are separate trades and the separation is the point: a house that ran its own auctions would be attesting to the quality of its own stock, and nobody would take it seriously. A house takes a slave in, assesses what she is and can do, trains what is worth training, and puts her up when she is ready; the guild sets the lot, writes the entry, and stands at the block.
Reading a slave at market
A buyer walking a market needs to know what he is looking at before he speaks to anyone, and the ribbon system exists so that he can.
The wide ribbon gives her primary role: brown for heavy labor, cream for domestic service, pink for personal attendance, green for supervisory and experienced work, gold for skilled and learned service, red or burgundy for sexual service. The narrow ribbon gives her sexual nature, a different question from her role and often the more important one: none means heterosexual, the statistical default; orange, lesbian; blue, a gay man; purple, bisexual; black, asexual — often sought by households wanting non-sexual service and by wives who would rather not have the question in the house; gray, demisexual, attraction only after a real bond forms, and prized for long-term companion roles for that reason. The tie says whether she is experienced — a knot means yes, a bow means no. A butterfly charm marks a trans slave; the symbolism is transformation and the living of one's genuine nature, and the charm belongs to the house and is reused. A thistle charm is a temperament warning — difficult, resistant, likely to run — not a category and not tied to how she arrived; most war captives carry one. The black iron bar is not a ribbon and is not removed after the sale; it means dangerous, and is a different thing from the thistle.
Nothing on the ribbons is good or bad. It is information, and information is worth what somebody will pay to have it. A tavern buying sexual service looks only at slaves who want to be in it and walks past the rest; what none of the buyers are buying is guaranteed access, because her refusal holds afterward exactly as it held before.
The candle
Bidding is timed by a candle, and has been for as long as the guilds have existed. A pin is set into the wax an inch below the flame; bidding runs until the wax softens enough to release the pin and it drops, and the last bid standing takes the lot. The candles are made to a guild standard — same wax, wick, and diameter — by makers who are neither houses nor guilds, so that nobody with an interest in when bidding closes makes the candle. What the standard does not give anyone is a second: a draught or an open door moves the drop either side of a minute, so nobody knows exactly where the end is, so nobody waits for it, and the room bids properly. The guilds have clocks and could time a lot to the Teich. They do not. Private sales use whatever candle is to hand. The Iron Coves does not use candles.
The auctioneer
He works for the guild and not for the house, and everything he may say follows from that. He reads the catalog and does not improve on it; he does not answer for what he cannot know; and he says what is wrong with her — the thistle, the bar, the gap in the Bill of Chattel, the crimes — because a guild whose auctioneers let buyers discover problems afterward would have no reason to exist. An auctioneer who embellishes has spent the only asset his trade has, which was never his.
The premium auction
Shining Reach runs the most prestigious sales in the world, and the whole occasion is built to be watched. Buyers are invited, and being invited is worth something. The lots process publicly through the Merchant District before the sale — advertisement and first assessment at once, the men who intend to bid watching how she walks. Inside there is a printed catalog, an object in its own right: the auction house's sigil beside the slaver house's on the cover, each lot's entry in the formal register with her nature, training, origin, ribbons, an assessment note signed by the house's senior assessor, and the starting bid, the language careful and philosophical, framing everything in terms of the Natural Order rather than a bill of lading. The most premium lots get an engraved portrait. People keep them; a catalog from a famous sale is a collectible in a city that collects things. The viewing salon comes before the gallery, where buyers examine lots at close range and anything past looking goes to a private room she may decline. Then the gallery and the bidding, the candle, the pin. The transaction room is afterward, where the sale actually happens: the money, the Bill, the registry entry, and the collar.
Every other sale
General auctions run continuously in every city with no procession and no catalog; the candle still burns because the guild is everywhere. Bulk lots move field and labor slaves in groups, priced by the lot. Specialist sales exist where a city has a concentration — Forgegate moves skilled slaves in volume, Eldershore moves everything. The Iron Coves sells on the quay out of whatever came off a ship, with no guild, no catalog, no candle, and no attestation of anything.
The Bill of Chattel
The document of ownership, traveling with her for the rest of her life as a slave: who has held her, how she was enslaved, any crimes she was sentenced for, what she was taught before and after, and the auction houses' own records. A Bill with a gap in it is worth asking about. It is held by her owner; she carries nothing, because her collar answers for her in the street.
Registry
Where a city keeps records the sale is registered: Clearhold exhaustively, Shining Reach thoroughly, Forgegate as a transfer of property, Eldershore in the lineage hall of the house that bought her, Stormharbor with the harbormaster alongside every other cargo. The Coves register nothing, which is why a slave sold there has a history that begins at the quay.
The collar
See Sigring#The maker. A new owner fits a new collar.
Private sales
Most transfers between households never reach the market. A man who has decided to sell puts word out, and the reasons are usually visible — a struggling household, a slave Saenydd for the work, an arrangement that was not working. A private viewing is the same assessment in someone's house, and anything past looking is between the buyer and her, exactly as at market.
The transfer
Three things happen and the order matters. The old collar comes off, opened by her old owner — whatever else the moment is, it is the end of something that may have gone on for years. The new collar goes on, fitted and closed by the buyer, and from that moment he owns her. Then the Wyndreis, the first command, given before anything else and without explanation, exactly as at a claiming; between owners it also draws a line under the household she came from. She does not choose the buyer. What she has is a refusal that holds afterward, and a new man answerable for her keeping.
Special cases
An unmarked free woman being sold is not a sale until she is marked; the Koeler and the collar come first, as with Frontier claims arriving at market and voluntary submissions arranged as sales. An Aesloes has no history any house can attest to and is priced low. A marked slave with no collar is a slave nobody claims, and a matter for a magistrate before the market.