He had been awake for thirty hours, and the numbers on the ledger had begun to move. The junior disciples had begun taking bets, which was its own kind of forecast.
The technique took eleven breaths. He had, by his own estimate, about seven. Money moves quietly in a city like this; grudges do not.
Whatever had walked through the outer array had not bothered to close it behind itself. The old instructor used to say that a technique you cannot explain is a technique you do not own.
“Do you know what the worst part is?” she asked. “I would have said yes. You never bothered to ask.”
There were two ways out of the valley, and someone had spent real money closing one of them. She had spent four years learning to be unremarkable, and it was about to stop working.
In the capital, a favour is a currency with a floating exchange rate. The blade was old, badly balanced, and the only honest thing in the room.
“Whatever you are about to do,” the guard said, “please do it somewhere that is not my shift.”
“It is not a rescue,” he corrected. “A rescue implies someone is going back.”
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.
Three days of travel had rubbed the edges off the plan without improving it. The contract's ninth clause was written in a hand that did not match the other eight.
“I am not asking you to trust me,” he said. “I am asking you to be practical.”
“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.”
“Say the number out loud,” the old man said. “Things you refuse to say out loud tend to get expensive.”
By morning the whole arrangement had changed hands twice, and nobody had raised their voice once.