There was a particular quality to the silence in that room — the kind that costs money. 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. Outside, the market went on shouting about fish, entirely unbothered by the end of an era.
The corridor smelled of iron filings and old incense — a workshop's smell, not a temple's. He counted the guards twice, got two different numbers, and decided the second one was a lie.
Whatever had walked through the outer array had not bothered to close it behind itself. Three of the seven seals had been broken, and none of them from the outside.
Nothing about the wound was fatal, which suggested the intent had been a message. What he wanted was simple. What he was willing to trade for it was the interesting part.
It was not a complicated arrangement, which was precisely what made it dangerous. In the capital, a favour is a currency with a floating exchange rate.
There were two ways out of the valley, and someone had spent real money closing one of them. He understood, then, that he had been the message and not the messenger.
The estate was smaller than the rumours, and better defended than the maps. The contract's ninth clause was written in a hand that did not match the other eight.
“It is not a rescue,” he corrected. “A rescue implies someone is going back.”
“Half the sect thinks you are dead,” she said. “The useful half.”
They had rehearsed the lie so many times that the truth felt like the improvisation. A merchant with nothing to sell is a merchant with something to hide.
“I am not asking you to trust me,” he said. “I am asking you to be practical.”
There is a difference between a debt and a leash, and the difference is usually paperwork. She read the report twice, then burned it, then wrote down the three sentences worth keeping.
The old instructor used to say that a technique you cannot explain is a technique you do not own. Three days of travel had rubbed the edges off the plan without improving it.
The blade was old, badly balanced, and the only honest thing in the room. He had been told the family was in decline. Decline, apparently, still ran to four courtyards.
The door closed. Somewhere below, a ledger was quietly amended.