The lamps along the outer corridor had burned down to their last inch of oil. 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. The estate was smaller than the rumours, and better defended than the maps.
“Half the sect thinks you are dead,” she said. “The useful half.”
“It is not a rescue,” he corrected. “A rescue implies someone is going back.”
The blade was old, badly balanced, and the only honest thing in the room. A merchant with nothing to sell is a merchant with something to hide.
“You are early,” she said, without looking up. “That is either respect or nerves.”
The junior disciples had begun taking bets, which was its own kind of forecast. He understood, then, that he had been the message and not the messenger.
“There is a word for people who bargain with things like that,” the priest said. “The word is briefly.”
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 contract's ninth clause was written in a hand that did not match the other eight. She read the report twice, then burned it, then wrote down the three sentences worth keeping.
“Say the number out loud,” the old man said. “Things you refuse to say out loud tend to get expensive.”
He put the cup down, and that was the end of the negotiation.