Snow came early that year, and it came without any of the usual warnings. The estate was smaller than the rumours, and better defended than the maps.
“Whatever you are about to do,” the guard said, “please do it somewhere that is not my shift.”
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.
“It is not a rescue,” he corrected. “A rescue implies someone is going back.”
Someone had gone to considerable trouble to make the scene look like carelessness. Nothing about the wound was fatal, which suggested the intent had been a message.
“There is a word for people who bargain with things like that,” the priest said. “The word is briefly.”
The array flickered — not the failing flicker of exhausted qi, but the deliberate one of a signal. The corridor smelled of iron filings and old incense — a workshop's smell, not a temple's.
In the capital, a favour is a currency with a floating exchange rate. He counted the guards twice, got two different numbers, and decided the second one was a lie.
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.
The blade was old, badly balanced, and the only honest thing in the room. Three days of travel had rubbed the edges off the plan without improving it.
“Half the sect thinks you are dead,” she said. “The useful half.”
The door closed. Somewhere below, a ledger was quietly amended.