Snow came early that year, and it came without any of the usual warnings. 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. In the capital, a favour is a currency with a floating exchange rate.
“Do you know what the worst part is?” she asked. “I would have said yes. You never bothered to ask.”
“Half the sect thinks you are dead,” she said. “The useful half.”
She read the report twice, then burned it, then wrote down the three sentences worth keeping. The array flickered — not the failing flicker of exhausted qi, but the deliberate one of a signal.
The corridor smelled of iron filings and old incense — a workshop's smell, not a temple's. Three of the seven seals had been broken, and none of them from the outside.
He had been told the family was in decline. Decline, apparently, still ran to four courtyards. It was not a complicated arrangement, which was precisely what made it dangerous.
“There is a word for people who bargain with things like that,” the priest said. “The word is briefly.”
“Whatever you are about to do,” the guard said, “please do it somewhere that is not my shift.”
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.
“It is not a rescue,” he corrected. “A rescue implies someone is going back.”
The door closed. Somewhere below, a ledger was quietly amended.