Rain had been falling for six days, and the river had opinions about it. She read the report twice, then burned it, then wrote down the three sentences worth keeping.
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.
What he wanted was simple. What he was willing to trade for it was the interesting part. The technique took eleven breaths. He had, by his own estimate, about seven.
He counted the guards twice, got two different numbers, and decided the second one was a lie. The estate was smaller than the rumours, and better defended than the maps.
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 corridor smelled of iron filings and old incense — a workshop's smell, not a temple's. It was not a complicated arrangement, which was precisely what made it dangerous.
There were two ways out of the valley, and someone had spent real money closing one of them. The blade was old, badly balanced, and the only honest thing in the room.
A merchant with nothing to sell is a merchant with something to hide. He understood, then, that he had been the message and not the messenger.
The junior disciples had begun taking bets, which was its own kind of forecast. They had rehearsed the lie so many times that the truth felt like the improvisation.
“Half the sect thinks you are dead,” she said. “The useful half.”
“You are early,” she said, without looking up. “That is either respect or nerves.”
He put the cup down, and that was the end of the negotiation.