The letter arrived folded twice, sealed once, and addressed to a name she had retired. Nothing about the wound was fatal, which suggested the intent had been a message.
A merchant with nothing to sell is a merchant with something to hide. Money moves quietly in a city like this; grudges do not.
“You are early,” she said, without looking up. “That is either respect or nerves.”
“Whatever you are about to do,” the guard said, “please do it somewhere that is not my shift.”
“I am not asking you to trust me,” he said. “I am asking you to be practical.”
“Half the sect thinks you are dead,” she said. “The useful half.”
“It is not a rescue,” he corrected. “A rescue implies someone is going back.”
The blade was old, badly balanced, and the only honest thing in the room. In the capital, a favour is a currency with a floating exchange rate.
Three days of travel had rubbed the edges off the plan without improving it. They had rehearsed the lie so many times that the truth felt like the improvisation.
“There is a word for people who bargain with things like that,” the priest said. “The word is briefly.”
The junior disciples had begun taking bets, which was its own kind of forecast. He counted the guards twice, got two different numbers, and decided the second one was a lie.
The corridor smelled of iron filings and old incense — a workshop's smell, not a temple's. He understood, then, that he had been the message and not the messenger.
The snow kept falling, patient as a creditor.