There was a particular quality to the silence in that room — the kind that costs money. 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. There were two ways out of the valley, and someone had spent real money closing one of them.
He had been told the family was in decline. Decline, apparently, still ran to four courtyards. They had rehearsed the lie so many times that the truth felt like the improvisation.
Whatever had walked through the outer array had not bothered to close it behind itself. The contract's ninth clause was written in a hand that did not match the other eight.
“It is not a rescue,” he corrected. “A rescue implies someone is going back.”
Nothing about the wound was fatal, which suggested the intent had been a message. What he wanted was simple. What he was willing to trade for it was the interesting part.
It was not a complicated arrangement, which was precisely what made it dangerous. The estate was smaller than the rumours, and better defended than the maps.
The junior disciples had begun taking bets, which was its own kind of forecast. He counted the guards twice, got two different numbers, and decided the second one was a lie.
She read the report twice, then burned it, then wrote down the three sentences worth keeping. Outside, the market went on shouting about fish, entirely unbothered by the end of an era.
“I am not asking you to trust me,” he said. “I am asking you to be practical.”
In the capital, a favour is a currency with a floating exchange rate. Money moves quietly in a city like this; grudges do not.
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.
She did not look back at the gate, which is how everyone knew she intended to return.