The compound opened inward like a compound always did—ring after ring of organizational space, the outermost functional, the innermost reserved for whoever sat at the center.
They walked through it: through the administrative outer yard where the day's operations had been heavily interrupted and were now watching from windows and doorways, through a covered arcade that smelled of oil and leather and the metallic trace of active formation stones, through a gate in an interior wall that the masked woman opened with a key she wore on a chain at her wrist.
The VIP lodge was through that gate and up a short stair, in a building that had been constructed with different material and different intention than everything around it. Darker wood. Wider windows. The quiet of money that doesn't feel the need to announce itself.
Inside: already arranged.
The auction house occupied the building's main floor in a configuration that managed the paradox of intimate and formal simultaneously.
