Lord Baek received us at dawn.
This was, Ren informed me quietly as we made our way through the outer corridors of the Baek estate, itself a statement. Men who received visitors at dawn were men who had not slept. Men who had not slept were men who had been waiting.
Lord Baek had been waiting for us.
The Baek estate was old — the kind of old that had stopped being impressive and become simply inevitable, the way mountains were old. The stones in the outer walls were different colors where they had been repaired across generations, each repair a decade written in masonry. We passed through three gates and a covered walkway before the servant leading us stopped and gestured toward an inner garden.
