Rain had been falling for six days, and the river had opinions about it. He had been told the family was in decline. Decline, apparently, still ran to four courtyards.
The old instructor used to say that a technique you cannot explain is a technique you do not own. The corridor smelled of iron filings and old incense — a workshop's smell, not a temple's.
“It is not a rescue,” he corrected. “A rescue implies someone is going back.”
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.
Someone had gone to considerable trouble to make the scene look like carelessness. Three days of travel had rubbed the edges off the plan without improving it.
What he wanted was simple. What he was willing to trade for it was the interesting part. She read the report twice, then burned it, then wrote down the three sentences worth keeping.
“I am not asking you to trust me,” he said. “I am asking you to be practical.”
“Whatever you are about to do,” the guard said, “please do it somewhere that is not my shift.”
“Half the sect thinks you are dead,” she said. “The useful half.”
Whatever had walked through the outer array had not bothered to close it behind itself. He counted the guards twice, got two different numbers, and decided the second one was a lie.
It was not a complicated arrangement, which was precisely what made it dangerous. There were two ways out of the valley, and someone had spent real money closing one of them.
“You are early,” she said, without looking up. “That is either respect or nerves.”
Every question she asked had a cheaper answer waiting behind it, and she refused all of them. A merchant with nothing to sell is a merchant with something to hide.
“There is a word for people who bargain with things like that,” the priest said. “The word is briefly.”
The bell rang a third time. This time, everyone was listening.