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 was not a complicated arrangement, which was precisely what made it dangerous. 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. The estate was smaller than the rumours, and better defended than the maps.
What he wanted was simple. What he was willing to trade for it was the interesting part. She read the report twice, then burned it, then wrote down the three sentences worth keeping.
A merchant with nothing to sell is a merchant with something to hide. He counted the guards twice, got two different numbers, and decided the second one was a lie.
“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. Outside, the market went on shouting about fish, entirely unbothered by the end of an era.
“I am not asking you to trust me,” he said. “I am asking you to be practical.”
“You are early,” she said, without looking up. “That is either respect or nerves.”
“Say the number out loud,” the old man said. “Things you refuse to say out loud tend to get expensive.”
The array flickered — not the failing flicker of exhausted qi, but the deliberate one of a signal. There were two ways out of the valley, and someone had spent real money closing one of them.
“Whatever you are about to do,” the guard said, “please do it somewhere that is not my shift.”
Three days of travel had rubbed the edges off the plan without improving it. The blade was old, badly balanced, and the only honest thing in the room.
The door closed. Somewhere below, a ledger was quietly amended.