The letter arrived folded twice, sealed once, and addressed to a name she had retired. Whatever had walked through the outer array had not bothered to close it behind itself.
“Whatever you are about to do,” the guard said, “please do it somewhere that is not my shift.”
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.
Outside, the market went on shouting about fish, entirely unbothered by the end of an era. The estate was smaller than the rumours, and better defended than the maps.
“It is not a rescue,” he corrected. “A rescue implies someone is going back.”
“Half the sect thinks you are dead,” she said. “The useful half.”
The junior disciples had begun taking bets, which was its own kind of forecast. The blade was old, badly balanced, and the only honest thing in the room.
“Do you know what the worst part is?” she asked. “I would have said yes. You never bothered to ask.”
She read the report twice, then burned it, then wrote down the three sentences worth keeping. Money moves quietly in a city like this; grudges do not.
The contract's ninth clause was written in a hand that did not match the other eight. There were two ways out of the valley, and someone had spent real money closing one of them.
Nothing about the wound was fatal, which suggested the intent had been a message. Someone had gone to considerable trouble to make the scene look like carelessness.
The door closed. Somewhere below, a ledger was quietly amended.