Rain had been falling for six days, and the river had opinions about it. Three days of travel had rubbed the edges off the plan without improving it.
“I am not asking you to trust me,” he said. “I am asking you to be practical.”
Whatever had walked through the outer array had not bothered to close it behind itself. They had rehearsed the lie so many times that the truth felt like the improvisation.
Every question she asked had a cheaper answer waiting behind it, and she refused all of them. There were two ways out of the valley, and someone had spent real money closing one of them.
A merchant with nothing to sell is a merchant with something to hide. It was not a complicated arrangement, which was precisely what made it dangerous.
Outside, the market went on shouting about fish, entirely unbothered by the end of an era. She read the report twice, then burned it, then wrote down the three sentences worth keeping.
In the capital, a favour is a currency with a floating exchange rate. Money moves quietly in a city like this; grudges do not.
“Half the sect thinks you are dead,” she said. “The useful half.”
He had been told the family was in decline. Decline, apparently, still ran to four courtyards. He counted the guards twice, got two different numbers, and decided the second one was a lie.
The old instructor used to say that a technique you cannot explain is a technique you do not own. The estate was smaller than the rumours, and better defended than the maps.
“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.”
He put the cup down, and that was the end of the negotiation.