Snow came early that year, and it came without any of the usual warnings. The estate was smaller than the rumours, and better defended than the maps.
“Say the number out loud,” the old man said. “Things you refuse to say out loud tend to get expensive.”
“I am not asking you to trust me,” he said. “I am asking you to be practical.”
Money moves quietly in a city like this; grudges do not. She read the report twice, then burned it, then wrote down the three sentences worth keeping.
“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.”
“It is not a rescue,” he corrected. “A rescue implies someone is going back.”
“There is a word for people who bargain with things like that,” the priest said. “The word is briefly.”
Outside, the market went on shouting about fish, entirely unbothered by the end of an era. Nothing about the wound was fatal, which suggested the intent had been a message.
Three days of travel had rubbed the edges off the plan without improving it. The blade was old, badly balanced, and the only honest thing in the room.
“Do you know what the worst part is?” she asked. “I would have said yes. You never bothered to ask.”
The junior disciples had begun taking bets, which was its own kind of forecast. The old instructor used to say that a technique you cannot explain is a technique you do not own.
A merchant with nothing to sell is a merchant with something to hide. Every question she asked had a cheaper answer waiting behind it, and she refused all of them.
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.
The contract's ninth clause was written in a hand that did not match the other eight. In the capital, a favour is a currency with a floating exchange rate.
She did not look back at the gate, which is how everyone knew she intended to return.