The lamps along the outer corridor had burned down to their last inch of oil. The junior disciples had begun taking bets, which was its own kind of forecast.
“It is not a rescue,” he corrected. “A rescue implies someone is going back.”
Outside, the market went on shouting about fish, entirely unbothered by the end of an era. A merchant with nothing to sell is a merchant with something to hide.
“There is a word for people who bargain with things like that,” the priest said. “The word is briefly.”
Whatever had walked through the outer array had not bothered to close it behind itself. Every question she asked had a cheaper answer waiting behind it, and she refused all of them.
What he wanted was simple. What he was willing to trade for it was the interesting part. The corridor smelled of iron filings and old incense — a workshop's smell, not a temple's.
“Whatever you are about to do,” the guard said, “please do it somewhere that is not my shift.”
“Do you know what the worst part is?” she asked. “I would have said yes. You never bothered to ask.”
“Half the sect thinks you are dead,” she said. “The useful half.”
“Say the number out loud,” the old man said. “Things you refuse to say out loud tend to get expensive.”
The estate was smaller than the rumours, and better defended than the maps. Three of the seven seals had been broken, and none of them from the outside.
“I am not asking you to trust me,” he said. “I am asking you to be practical.”
He counted the guards twice, got two different numbers, and decided the second one was a lie. There were two ways out of the valley, and someone had spent real money closing one of them.
“You are early,” she said, without looking up. “That is either respect or nerves.”
By morning the whole arrangement had changed hands twice, and nobody had raised their voice once.