The lamps along the outer corridor had burned down to their last inch of oil. Three days of travel had rubbed the edges off the plan without improving it.
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.
A merchant with nothing to sell is a merchant with something to hide. The blade was old, badly balanced, and the only honest thing in the room.
Whatever had walked through the outer array had not bothered to close it behind itself. She had spent four years learning to be unremarkable, and it was about to stop working.
“Do you know what the worst part is?” she asked. “I would have said yes. You never bothered to ask.”
“I am not asking you to trust me,” he said. “I am asking you to be practical.”
“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. Three of the seven seals had been broken, and none of them from the outside.
“You are early,” she said, without looking up. “That is either respect or nerves.”
He had been told the family was in decline. Decline, apparently, still ran to four courtyards. What he wanted was simple. What he was willing to trade for it was the interesting part.
The array flickered — not the failing flicker of exhausted qi, but the deliberate one of a signal. In the capital, a favour is a currency with a floating exchange rate.
“Whatever you are about to do,” the guard said, “please do it somewhere that is not my shift.”
By morning the whole arrangement had changed hands twice, and nobody had raised their voice once.