He had been awake for thirty hours, and the numbers on the ledger had begun to move. She read the report twice, then burned it, then wrote down the three sentences worth keeping.
“Say the number out loud,” the old man said. “Things you refuse to say out loud tend to get expensive.”
Nothing about the wound was fatal, which suggested the intent had been a message. The contract's ninth clause was written in a hand that did not match the other eight.
The corridor smelled of iron filings and old incense — a workshop's smell, not a temple's. Outside, the market went on shouting about fish, entirely unbothered by the end of an era.
There is a difference between a debt and a leash, and the difference is usually paperwork. In the capital, a favour is a currency with a floating exchange rate.
“You are early,” she said, without looking up. “That is either respect or nerves.”
“Half the sect thinks you are dead,” she said. “The useful half.”
He understood, then, that he had been the message and not the messenger. The technique took eleven breaths. He had, by his own estimate, about seven.
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.
“Whatever you are about to do,” the guard said, “please do it somewhere that is not my shift.”
“I am not asking you to trust me,” he said. “I am asking you to be practical.”
Whatever had walked through the outer array had not bothered to close it behind itself. Three of the seven seals had been broken, and none of them from the outside.
The door closed. Somewhere below, a ledger was quietly amended.