Snow came early that year, and it came without any of the usual warnings. 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.”
“I am not asking you to trust me,” he said. “I am asking you to be practical.”
He had been told the family was in decline. Decline, apparently, still ran to four courtyards. The old instructor used to say that a technique you cannot explain is a technique you do not own.
The contract's ninth clause was written in a hand that did not match the other eight. A merchant with nothing to sell is a merchant with something to hide.
“Say the number out loud,” the old man said. “Things you refuse to say out loud tend to get expensive.”
“There is a word for people who bargain with things like that,” the priest said. “The word is briefly.”
“Half the sect thinks you are dead,” she said. “The useful half.”
There were two ways out of the valley, and someone had spent real money closing one of them. She had spent four years learning to be unremarkable, and it was about to stop working.
“Do you know what the worst part is?” she asked. “I would have said yes. You never bothered to ask.”
“It is not a rescue,” he corrected. “A rescue implies someone is going back.”
Someone had gone to considerable trouble to make the scene look like carelessness. Whatever had walked through the outer array had not bothered to close it behind itself.
“You are early,” she said, without looking up. “That is either respect or nerves.”
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.
What he wanted was simple. What he was willing to trade for it was the interesting part. The technique took eleven breaths. He had, by his own estimate, about seven.
The door closed. Somewhere below, a ledger was quietly amended.