The lamps along the outer corridor had burned down to their last inch of oil. He had been told the family was in decline. Decline, apparently, still ran to four courtyards.
“Whatever you are about to do,” the guard said, “please do it somewhere that is not my shift.”
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.
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.
There is a difference between a debt and a leash, and the difference is usually paperwork. The estate was smaller than the rumours, and better defended than the maps.
“Say the number out loud,” the old man said. “Things you refuse to say out loud tend to get expensive.”
They had rehearsed the lie so many times that the truth felt like the improvisation. Three days of travel had rubbed the edges off the plan without improving it.
“Half the sect thinks you are dead,” she said. “The useful half.”
Whatever had walked through the outer array had not bothered to close it behind itself. The array flickered — not the failing flicker of exhausted qi, but the deliberate one of a signal.
“You are early,” she said, without looking up. “That is either respect or nerves.”
“There is a word for people who bargain with things like that,” the priest said. “The word is briefly.”
He put the cup down, and that was the end of the negotiation.