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.
“There is a word for people who bargain with things like that,” the priest said. “The word is briefly.”
The old instructor used to say that a technique you cannot explain is a technique you do not own. The technique took eleven breaths. He had, by his own estimate, about seven.
“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. There is a difference between a debt and a leash, and the difference is usually paperwork.
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.
“Whatever you are about to do,” the guard said, “please do it somewhere that is not my shift.”
What he wanted was simple. What he was willing to trade for it was the interesting part. In the capital, a favour is a currency with a floating exchange rate.
“It is not a rescue,” he corrected. “A rescue implies someone is going back.”
“Say the number out loud,” the old man said. “Things you refuse to say out loud tend to get expensive.”
“Half the sect thinks you are dead,” she said. “The useful half.”
By morning the whole arrangement had changed hands twice, and nobody had raised their voice once.