Snow came early that year, and it came without any of the usual warnings. There were two ways out of the valley, and someone had spent real money closing one of them.
Outside, the market went on shouting about fish, entirely unbothered by the end of an era. The junior disciples had begun taking bets, which was its own kind of forecast.
What he wanted was simple. What he was willing to trade for it was the interesting part. In the capital, a favour is a currency with a floating exchange rate.
“Whatever you are about to do,” the guard said, “please do it somewhere that is not my shift.”
“You are early,” she said, without looking up. “That is either respect or nerves.”
There is a difference between a debt and a leash, and the difference is usually paperwork. A merchant with nothing to sell is a merchant with something to hide.
She read the report twice, then burned it, then wrote down the three sentences worth keeping. He counted the guards twice, got two different numbers, and decided the second one was a lie.
“I am not asking you to trust me,” he said. “I am asking you to be practical.”
He had been told the family was in decline. Decline, apparently, still ran to four courtyards. They had rehearsed the lie so many times that the truth felt like the improvisation.
“There is a word for people who bargain with things like that,” the priest said. “The word is briefly.”
The contract's ninth clause was written in a hand that did not match the other eight. The technique took eleven breaths. He had, by his own estimate, about seven.
“Do you know what the worst part is?” she asked. “I would have said yes. You never bothered to ask.”
The estate was smaller than the rumours, and better defended than the maps. Every question she asked had a cheaper answer waiting behind it, and she refused all of them.
She did not look back at the gate, which is how everyone knew she intended to return.