By the time the argument reached the courtyard, half of it had already been decided. In the capital, a favour is a currency with a floating exchange rate.
He had been told the family was in decline. Decline, apparently, still ran to four courtyards. There is a difference between a debt and a leash, and the difference is usually paperwork.
“Whatever you are about to do,” the guard said, “please do it somewhere that is not my shift.”
“You are early,” she said, without looking up. “That is either respect or nerves.”
“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. The junior disciples had begun taking bets, which was its own kind of forecast.
“It is not a rescue,” he corrected. “A rescue implies someone is going back.”
“Do you know what the worst part is?” she asked. “I would have said yes. You never bothered to ask.”
The corridor smelled of iron filings and old incense — a workshop's smell, not a temple's. It was not a complicated arrangement, which was precisely what made it dangerous.
“There is a word for people who bargain with things like that,” the priest said. “The word is briefly.”
Three of the seven seals had been broken, and none of them from the outside. The technique took eleven breaths. He had, by his own estimate, about seven.
Three days of travel had rubbed the edges off the plan without improving it. The array flickered — not the failing flicker of exhausted qi, but the deliberate one of a signal.
“I am not asking you to trust me,” he said. “I am asking you to be practical.”
By morning the whole arrangement had changed hands twice, and nobody had raised their voice once.