Rain had been falling for six days, and the river had opinions about it. There were two ways out of the valley, and someone had spent real money closing one of them.
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.
In the capital, a favour is a currency with a floating exchange rate. Outside, the market went on shouting about fish, entirely unbothered by the end of an era.
“Half the sect thinks you are dead,” she said. “The useful half.”
“You are early,” she said, without looking up. “That is either respect or nerves.”
“I am not asking you to trust me,” he said. “I am asking you to be practical.”
“Say the number out loud,” the old man said. “Things you refuse to say out loud tend to get expensive.”
He had been told the family was in decline. Decline, apparently, still ran to four courtyards. He counted the guards twice, got two different numbers, and decided the second one was a lie.
Three days of travel had rubbed the edges off the plan without improving it. Every question she asked had a cheaper answer waiting behind it, and she refused all of them.
Nothing about the wound was fatal, which suggested the intent had been a message. Money moves quietly in a city like this; grudges do not.
The junior disciples had begun taking bets, which was its own kind of forecast. He understood, then, that he had been the message and not the messenger.
He put the cup down, and that was the end of the negotiation.