A boy, cursed by ethics he can barely name, let alone sketch out or enact. Sizhui, back bowed under Anduin's burdens would hold his head just so high, his gaze a blade, cutting. Beneath the beam of that muted despair, Lan Wangji finds himself greeting the serving girl with her water — generously presented beside drenched mint for infusion — and her diluted wine, and accepts her rattling wooden tray.

Better she should withdraw before Anduin is reminded of people and their frailty, of the human cost on the ground of whatever grandiose decision must be taken in abstracts. This girl, who spares a smile and must hope for coin, or at least safe exemption from the petty indignities a tavern wench tolerates with daily fortitude, lives on time bought through the lady Rigarda's mercenary cruelties.

The clink of cups and jars set on the table startles him out of reverie. Hand brittle, Lan Wangji waves the girl dismissed once more, binds his sleeve around his wrist to avoid a wide sweep of the table, and pours Anduin's wine first. Charitably hospitable, a slow hollow growing in his chest. The artifice of familiar protocols, the service.

"Are you?" Able. Willing. Prepared.