By the time the argument reached the courtyard, half of it had already been decided. He had been told the family was in decline. Decline, apparently, still ran to four courtyards.
The technique took eleven breaths. He had, by his own estimate, about seven. He counted the guards twice, got two different numbers, and decided the second one was a lie.
There is a difference between a debt and a leash, and the difference is usually paperwork. The junior disciples had begun taking bets, which was its own kind of forecast.
“There is a word for people who bargain with things like that,” the priest said. “The word is briefly.”
“Half the sect thinks you are dead,” she said. “The useful half.”
The corridor smelled of iron filings and old incense — a workshop's smell, not a temple's. Someone had gone to considerable trouble to make the scene look like carelessness.
He understood, then, that he had been the message and not the messenger. There were two ways out of the valley, and someone had spent real money closing one of them.
“You are early,” she said, without looking up. “That is either respect or nerves.”
A merchant with nothing to sell is a merchant with something to hide. Every question she asked had a cheaper answer waiting behind it, and she refused all of them.
“Do you know what the worst part is?” she asked. “I would have said yes. You never bothered to ask.”
The blade was old, badly balanced, and the only honest thing in the room. Whatever had walked through the outer array had not bothered to close it behind itself.
The bell rang a third time. This time, everyone was listening.