They trade words in borrowed tongue, the stone mechanisms hanging off string round Lan Wangji's neck in an awkward, ungainly pendulum mediating the encounter. He whispers down, wind-carried, and the girl seems to hear his question only to nestle deeper into the outer folds of his worn-in silks, at once bashful and adoring of the attention cast upon her. She plays, it strikes him, like a young burrowed animal that has successfully identified its provider.

...him. Them, Lan Wangji decides, glance measuring and absent when it traverses Lee Chang again to find him altogether suitable. There are those who sell themselves too quickly to a soft-hearted cause among them, and those only wedded and bedded with the sword, and those too — two, at a choice count — who only suit massacre and madness. And then, steely and brazen, there is Jiang Wanyin.

But Lee Chang is half oil of good manners, half waters of impulse. Together, his inclinations might combine into a person of passably righteous example, whole.

"She offers no name," he clarifies, before Lee Chang need ask. But there are women beyond them, rushing with the day's linen to take advantage of the waters purified beyond. One, or an overwhelmed father, shoulders narrow and eyes blind with the morning's fatigue after a night's watch, may have lost a charge.

"We will go." There, where Lan Wangji tips his head to nod in direction. "You may ask them. Ask what they know of our — companions, also."