There was a particular quality to the silence in that room — the kind that costs money. In the capital, a favour is a currency with a floating exchange rate.
What he wanted was simple. What he was willing to trade for it was the interesting part. Three days of travel had rubbed the edges off the plan without improving it.
“You are early,” she said, without looking up. “That is either respect or nerves.”
“Say the number out loud,” the old man said. “Things you refuse to say out loud tend to get expensive.”
“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.”
He had been told the family was in decline. Decline, apparently, still ran to four courtyards. Outside, the market went on shouting about fish, entirely unbothered by the end of an era.
“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. Every question she asked had a cheaper answer waiting behind it, and she refused all of them.
Nothing about the wound was fatal, which suggested the intent had been a message. The blade was old, badly balanced, and the only honest thing in the room.
The corridor smelled of iron filings and old incense — a workshop's smell, not a temple's. There is a difference between a debt and a leash, and the difference is usually paperwork.
She did not look back at the gate, which is how everyone knew she intended to return.