By the time the argument reached the courtyard, half of it had already been decided. In the capital, a favour is a currency with a floating exchange rate.
The old instructor used to say that a technique you cannot explain is a technique you do not own. There were two ways out of the valley, and someone had spent real money closing one of them.
The estate was smaller than the rumours, and better defended than the maps. He understood, then, that he had been the message and not the messenger.
“There is a word for people who bargain with things like that,” the priest said. “The word is briefly.”
“You are early,” she said, without looking up. “That is either respect or nerves.”
Nothing about the wound was fatal, which suggested the intent had been a message. Outside, the market went on shouting about fish, entirely unbothered by the end of an era.
“It is not a rescue,” he corrected. “A rescue implies someone is going back.”
He counted the guards twice, got two different numbers, and decided the second one was a lie. A merchant with nothing to sell is a merchant with something to hide.
The junior disciples had begun taking bets, which was its own kind of forecast. There is a difference between a debt and a leash, and the difference is usually paperwork.
“I am not asking you to trust me,” he said. “I am asking you to be practical.”
“Half the sect thinks you are dead,” she said. “The useful half.”
“Do you know what the worst part is?” she asked. “I would have said yes. You never bothered to ask.”
It was not a complicated arrangement, which was precisely what made it dangerous. She read the report twice, then burned it, then wrote down the three sentences worth keeping.
Whatever had walked through the outer array had not bothered to close it behind itself. Money moves quietly in a city like this; grudges do not.
The technique took eleven breaths. He had, by his own estimate, about seven. Every question she asked had a cheaper answer waiting behind it, and she refused all of them.
By morning the whole arrangement had changed hands twice, and nobody had raised their voice once.