Rain had been falling for six days, and the river had opinions about it. Nothing about the wound was fatal, which suggested the intent had been a message.
Every question she asked had a cheaper answer waiting behind it, and she refused all of them. In the capital, a favour is a currency with a floating exchange rate.
The technique took eleven breaths. He had, by his own estimate, about seven. The old instructor used to say that a technique you cannot explain is a technique you do not own.
He counted the guards twice, got two different numbers, and decided the second one was a lie. The junior disciples had begun taking bets, which was its own kind of forecast.
“Whatever you are about to do,” the guard said, “please do it somewhere that is not my shift.”
Three days of travel had rubbed the edges off the plan without improving it. Money moves quietly in a city like this; grudges do not.
They had rehearsed the lie so many times that the truth felt like the improvisation. 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. He had been told the family was in decline. Decline, apparently, still ran to four courtyards.
“There is a word for people who bargain with things like that,” the priest said. “The word is briefly.”
Whatever had walked through the outer array had not bothered to close it behind itself. The contract's ninth clause was written in a hand that did not match the other eight.
The corridor smelled of iron filings and old incense — a workshop's smell, not a temple's. Three of the seven seals had been broken, and none of them from the outside.
“You are early,” she said, without looking up. “That is either respect or nerves.”
The snow kept falling, patient as a creditor.