Rain had been falling for six days, and the river had opinions about it. The estate was smaller than the rumours, and better defended than the maps.
He counted the guards twice, got two different numbers, and decided the second one was a lie. He had been told the family was in decline. Decline, apparently, still ran to four courtyards.
“You are early,” she said, without looking up. “That is either respect or nerves.”
What he wanted was simple. What he was willing to trade for it was the interesting part. In the capital, a favour is a currency with a floating exchange rate.
“Half the sect thinks you are dead,” she said. “The useful half.”
The contract's ninth clause was written in a hand that did not match the other eight. Nothing about the wound was fatal, which suggested the intent had been a message.
“There is a word for people who bargain with things like that,” the priest said. “The word is briefly.”
“Whatever you are about to do,” the guard said, “please do it somewhere that is not my shift.”
“Do you know what the worst part is?” she asked. “I would have said yes. You never bothered to ask.”
The technique took eleven breaths. He had, by his own estimate, about seven. He understood, then, that he had been the message and not the messenger.
“I am not asking you to trust me,” he said. “I am asking you to be practical.”
Three days of travel had rubbed the edges off the plan without improving it. Three of the seven seals had been broken, and none of them from the outside.
The corridor smelled of iron filings and old incense — a workshop's smell, not a temple's. The array flickered — not the failing flicker of exhausted qi, but the deliberate one of a signal.
The bell rang a third time. This time, everyone was listening.