Rain had been falling for six days, and the river had opinions about it. 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 junior disciples had begun taking bets, which was its own kind of forecast.
“Do you know what the worst part is?” she asked. “I would have said yes. You never bothered to ask.”
He counted the guards twice, got two different numbers, and decided the second one was a lie. Nothing about the wound was fatal, which suggested the intent had been a message.
The corridor smelled of iron filings and old incense — a workshop's smell, not a temple's. The old instructor used to say that a technique you cannot explain is a technique you do not own.
“Whatever you are about to do,” the guard said, “please do it somewhere that is not my shift.”
There is a difference between a debt and a leash, and the difference is usually paperwork. 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. She had spent four years learning to be unremarkable, and it was about to stop working.
In the capital, a favour is a currency with a floating exchange rate. It was not a complicated arrangement, which was precisely what made it dangerous.
The technique took eleven breaths. He had, by his own estimate, about seven. Every question she asked had a cheaper answer waiting behind it, and she refused all of them.
“Say the number out loud,” the old man said. “Things you refuse to say out loud tend to get expensive.”
“You are early,” she said, without looking up. “That is either respect or nerves.”
What he wanted was simple. What he was willing to trade for it was the interesting part. The estate was smaller than the rumours, and better defended than the maps.
Money moves quietly in a city like this; grudges do not. There were two ways out of the valley, and someone had spent real money closing one of them.
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.
The bell rang a third time. This time, everyone was listening.