Rain had been falling for six days, and the river had opinions about it. 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. A merchant with nothing to sell is a merchant with something to hide.
They had rehearsed the lie so many times that the truth felt like the improvisation. 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. Someone had gone to considerable trouble to make the scene look like carelessness.
“I am not asking you to trust me,” he said. “I am asking you to be practical.”
Money moves quietly in a city like this; grudges do not. The technique took eleven breaths. He had, by his own estimate, about seven.
He understood, then, that he had been the message and not the messenger. The estate was smaller than the rumours, and better defended than the maps.
Three days of travel had rubbed the edges off the plan without improving it. He counted the guards twice, got two different numbers, and decided the second one was a lie.
“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. There is a difference between a debt and a leash, and the difference is usually paperwork.
There were two ways out of the valley, and someone had spent real money closing one of them. The contract's ninth clause was written in a hand that did not match the other eight.
The door closed. Somewhere below, a ledger was quietly amended.