Snow came early that year, and it came without any of the usual warnings. In the capital, a favour is a currency with a floating exchange rate.
Whatever had walked through the outer array had not bothered to close it behind itself. Three of the seven seals had been broken, and none of them from the outside.
There were two ways out of the valley, and someone had spent real money closing one of them. What he wanted was simple. What he was willing to trade for it was the interesting part.
They had rehearsed the lie so many times that the truth felt like the improvisation. The corridor smelled of iron filings and old incense — a workshop's smell, not a temple's.
The old instructor used to say that a technique you cannot explain is a technique you do not own. The technique took eleven breaths. He had, by his own estimate, about seven.
A merchant with nothing to sell is a merchant with something to hide. The blade was old, badly balanced, and the only honest thing in the room.
It was not a complicated arrangement, which was precisely what made it dangerous. She read the report twice, then burned it, then wrote down the three sentences worth keeping.
There is a difference between a debt and a leash, and the difference is usually paperwork. He had been told the family was in decline. Decline, apparently, still ran to four courtyards.
The junior disciples had begun taking bets, which was its own kind of forecast. Outside, the market went on shouting about fish, entirely unbothered by the end of an era.
Every question she asked had a cheaper answer waiting behind it, and she refused all of them. The estate was smaller than the rumours, and better defended than the maps.
The array flickered — not the failing flicker of exhausted qi, but the deliberate one of a signal. The technique took eleven breaths. He had, by his own estimate, about seven.
Someone had gone to considerable trouble to make the scene look like carelessness. She read the report twice, then burned it, then wrote down the three sentences worth keeping.
The bell rang a third time. This time, everyone was listening.