Alistair spoke for two minutes, and he invented nothing.
That was the only thing that could survive a woman who could smell a lie from across a desk.
He took the three true things he had already given her, and he gave them again. This time in a different order, slower, weighed down with the small useless details a nervous, honest man piles on when he is afraid he has not been believed.
The name of the worst of the two toll districts.
The keeper's bad hip, which kept the old man off the high shelves.
The rains of the season, which had already closed the lower Halversen road twice this year and would likely close it a third time before the courier ever reached it.
He gave her nothing new, because he had nothing new that was safe to give. And he let her watch him give her nothing, openly, so she could see plainly that he knew it too.
That was the whole gamble.
