Battles cannot be won from the dais, bartered with rhetoric. And they find themselves in the midst of war.

But the boy has spoken fairly: he is not of the sword, then, of the impulse for slaughter. Waters such as the one Wangji sips in trickles now would leave him no less tarnished than they encountered him. The killing sickness eludes him.

Your concern is selfish. But the boy knows so already, glance downcast. Whatever verbal weapons Lan Wangji might set against him will not cast or widen his wounds, barely infect them. Drifting, Wangji's thumb walks the rim of his cup, and he considers the fit of this boy against the greedy, busy tumult of the tavern, of the violence-rained streets. He is not made for this world, for its filth. Rubble would bleed him.

"As you wish, we do." Together, a paired anomaly.