By the time the argument reached the courtyard, half of it had already been decided. The technique took eleven breaths. He had, by his own estimate, about seven.
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.
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.
“Say the number out loud,” the old man said. “Things you refuse to say out loud tend to get expensive.”
Three days of travel had rubbed the edges off the plan without improving it. It was not a complicated arrangement, which was precisely what made it dangerous.
A merchant with nothing to sell is a merchant with something to hide. Someone had gone to considerable trouble to make the scene look like carelessness.
Every question she asked had a cheaper answer waiting behind it, and she refused all of them. 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.”
“It is not a rescue,” he corrected. “A rescue implies someone is going back.”
Whatever had walked through the outer array had not bothered to close it behind itself. The old instructor used to say that a technique you cannot explain is a technique you do not own.
The estate was smaller than the rumours, and better defended than the maps. They had rehearsed the lie so many times that the truth felt like the improvisation.
The snow kept falling, patient as a creditor.