The lamps along the outer corridor had burned down to their last inch of oil. He had been told the family was in decline. Decline, apparently, still ran to four courtyards.
“Whatever you are about to do,” the guard said, “please do it somewhere that is not my shift.”
The junior disciples had begun taking bets, which was its own kind of forecast. There is a difference between a debt and a leash, and the difference is usually paperwork.
“Half the sect thinks you are dead,” she said. “The useful half.”
The technique took eleven breaths. He had, by his own estimate, about seven. Someone had gone to considerable trouble to make the scene look like carelessness.
Three of the seven seals had been broken, and none of them from the outside. The estate was smaller than the rumours, and better defended than the maps.
She read the report twice, then burned it, then wrote down the three sentences worth keeping. The blade was old, badly balanced, and the only honest thing in the room.
Nothing about the wound was fatal, which suggested the intent had been a message. The contract's ninth clause was written in a hand that did not match the other eight.
Whatever had walked through the outer array had not bothered to close it behind itself. He understood, then, that he had been the message and not the messenger.
Three days of travel had rubbed the edges off the plan without improving it. He counted the guards twice, got two different numbers, and decided the second one was a lie.
“There is a word for people who bargain with things like that,” the priest said. “The word is briefly.”
“It is not a rescue,” he corrected. “A rescue implies someone is going back.”
And that, more than any of the shouting that followed, was the moment it became inevitable.