Ten days is a long time when you have nothing to do but wait and everything to lose.
I filled those days the way I had always filled difficult stretches of time: with work. Mundane, methodical, detailed work that kept the hands busy and the mind sharp. I reviewed every contract currently active in the household's commercial interests. I met with the steward about the autumn household accounts. I read the land survey reports that had been sitting on my desk since spring, unannotated.
I also did not stop gathering information.
Shen Bao's watchers maintained their post outside the townhouse on Copper Bell Lane. In the three days following the River Pavilion encounter, two visitors arrived after dark: a minor official from the Board of Works, and a land assessor whose affiliation Shen Bao recognized from a case he had handled two years prior—a property dispute that had been settled in a way that several of the losing parties had found suspicious.
