Every rung of the ladder she had climbed since she was a girl had sworn the next one up was the Covenant, and the last Covenant lord alive had told her, laughing, that no such agent ever existed.
Here, at last, was the reason the trail had always dead-ended in skeletons.
And it was such a simple, dumb explanation.
At the table, slowly, her hand came off the ledgers.
"The collection of Ravenclaw's debt," she said. "Explain how you did it."
"It's simple. He had debt, we bought his debt, then made certain the money he borrowed could never turn a single coin. So the debt was called, and he paid it."
The wet laugh got out of him again.
"He paid it. Begged it off every neighbour who would still open a door to him, and it broke his back doing it. After that we did nothing at all. He spent eleven years finishing what we started for him."
His collar was black with sweat now.
