There was a particular quality to the silence in that room — the kind that costs money. Nothing about the wound was fatal, which suggested the intent had been a message.
He understood, then, that he had been the message and not the messenger. Three days of travel had rubbed the edges off the plan without improving it.
The technique took eleven breaths. He had, by his own estimate, about seven. They had rehearsed the lie so many times that the truth felt like the improvisation.
“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. 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. Three of the seven seals had been broken, and none of them from the outside.
There were two ways out of the valley, and someone had spent real money closing one of them. 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.
“Do you know what the worst part is?” she asked. “I would have said yes. You never bothered to ask.”
The estate was smaller than the rumours, and better defended than the maps. The old instructor used to say that a technique you cannot explain is a technique you do not own.
“It is not a rescue,” he corrected. “A rescue implies someone is going back.”
He put the cup down, and that was the end of the negotiation.