Nobody in the compound slept the night the second bell rang out of turn. The junior disciples had begun taking bets, which was its own kind of forecast.
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.
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.
“Say the number out loud,” the old man said. “Things you refuse to say out loud tend to get expensive.”
“It is not a rescue,” he corrected. “A rescue implies someone is going back.”
In the capital, a favour is a currency with a floating exchange rate. Someone had gone to considerable trouble to make the scene look like carelessness.
Nothing about the wound was fatal, which suggested the intent had been a message. He counted the guards twice, got two different numbers, and decided the second one was a lie.
“Whatever you are about to do,” the guard said, “please do it somewhere that is not my shift.”
“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.”
The array flickered — not the failing flicker of exhausted qi, but the deliberate one of a signal. He had been told the family was in decline. Decline, apparently, still ran to four courtyards.
“There is a word for people who bargain with things like that,” the priest said. “The word is briefly.”
“Do you know what the worst part is?” she asked. “I would have said yes. You never bothered to ask.”
The old instructor used to say that a technique you cannot explain is a technique you do not own. A merchant with nothing to sell is a merchant with something to hide.
“I am not asking you to trust me,” he said. “I am asking you to be practical.”
The bell rang a third time. This time, everyone was listening.