Rain had been falling for six days, and the river had opinions about it. Nothing about the wound was fatal, which suggested the intent had been a message.
“I am not asking you to trust me,” he said. “I am asking you to be practical.”
In the capital, a favour is a currency with a floating exchange rate. Someone had gone to considerable trouble to make the scene look like carelessness.
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.
“It is not a rescue,” he corrected. “A rescue implies someone is going back.”
He understood, then, that he had been the message and not the messenger. A merchant with nothing to sell is a merchant with something to hide.
She read the report twice, then burned it, then wrote down the three sentences worth keeping. What he wanted was simple. What he was willing to trade for it was the interesting part.
“You are early,” she said, without looking up. “That is either respect or nerves.”
“Do you know what the worst part is?” she asked. “I would have said yes. You never bothered to ask.”
There were two ways out of the valley, and someone had spent real money closing one of them. 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. He counted the guards twice, got two different numbers, and decided the second one was a lie.
“Half the sect thinks you are dead,” she said. “The useful half.”
The door closed. Somewhere below, a ledger was quietly amended.