Rain had been falling for six days, and the river had opinions about it. Nothing about the wound was fatal, which suggested the intent had been a message.
The junior disciples had begun taking bets, which was its own kind of forecast. Every question she asked had a cheaper answer waiting behind it, and she refused all of them.
He had been told the family was in decline. Decline, apparently, still ran to four courtyards. The blade was old, badly balanced, and the only honest thing in the room.
The array flickered — not the failing flicker of exhausted qi, but the deliberate one of a signal. There were two ways out of the valley, and someone had spent real money closing one of them.
The technique took eleven breaths. He had, by his own estimate, about seven. There is a difference between a debt and a leash, and the difference is usually paperwork.
Three days of travel had rubbed the edges off the plan without improving it. Three of the seven seals had been broken, and none of them from the outside.
The corridor smelled of iron filings and old incense — a workshop's smell, not a temple's. He understood, then, that he had been the message and not the messenger.
In the capital, a favour is a currency with a floating exchange rate. Money moves quietly in a city like this; grudges do not.
They had rehearsed the lie so many times that the truth felt like the improvisation. The estate was smaller than the rumours, and better defended than the maps.
She read the report twice, then burned it, then wrote down the three sentences worth keeping. What he wanted was simple. What he was willing to trade for it was the interesting part.
Whatever had walked through the outer array had not bothered to close it behind itself. Outside, the market went on shouting about fish, entirely unbothered by the end of an era.
“It is not a rescue,” he corrected. “A rescue implies someone is going back.”
A merchant with nothing to sell is a merchant with something to hide. She had spent four years learning to be unremarkable, and it was about to stop working.
Three days of travel had rubbed the edges off the plan without improving it. The contract's ninth clause was written in a hand that did not match the other eight.
He counted the guards twice, got two different numbers, and decided the second one was a lie. He had been told the family was in decline. Decline, apparently, still ran to four courtyards.
“You are early,” she said, without looking up. “That is either respect or nerves.”
The bell rang a third time. This time, everyone was listening.