A priest in a towering feathered headdress stands at the top of a stone temple staircase having just let go, while a severed head in jade and green regalia tumbles down the steps and blood runs the full length of the stone.
No arrangement was ever free. The terms were agreed to long before you were born, by people who understood them better than you do, and the invoice has simply not come due yet. Rain, harvest, a good year, a quiet one, a child who lived. It gets settled at the top of the stairs like everything else does.
Eventually is not a maybe. It's a schedule.