[ After, deed done. Their poor weather friends, like straying cats, rallied, and their teeth and bones rattling, and the membrane of their exhaustion, sick and cloying. Creatures of dregs and cold. Pale stitch-work of them glistened under blinks of candle light.
The woman — travesty of manners — the sorceress speaks in fast, shrill scratches. Brittle, like the splinters of this... operation, sequence of miscalculations yielding to pleasant advantage. Forged by flame.
He had intended the night's sleep, hours past his due. In Cloud Recesses, so close to dawn, time bares itself, obscene. But they are locusts swarmed around one... business woman's hospitality, smell of cold, damp plaster and stabs of ill polished floor under their feet. A pleasure house, Wei Ying gave the name. In mistress Tamaiu's servant quarters, stifled and short like crammed beads on jade string.
And their friendly invaders, sharing the enclosures, a girl spread worn and thin like wool skein before Lan Wangji's own. He does not stir her — barely lingers, hovered and plain, to watch the gleaming, swirled swell of her magic light, playful against the relative, silent discipline of a fire talisman. He gentles down, billowed whites and half the ship's ash scattered like scrying filigree, scattered on their floors — turned away with one hand, at the last moment, when he takes both knees, to leash his silks away from imposing on the girl.
And she asks, of no one in particular —
...ah. ]
Apologies.
[ A simple gift, cleanly given. A diplomatic complication. The due of children. His mouth rounds the sound, hands chained in his lap, until he remembers himself — the tatters of care — and reaches into his resting place for the one priceless possession still afforded to him: wool spread, struggling feebly to keep the fealty of every frayed thread. Offered, before the girl. Hello. ]
iv.
The woman — travesty of manners — the sorceress speaks in fast, shrill scratches. Brittle, like the splinters of this... operation, sequence of miscalculations yielding to pleasant advantage. Forged by flame.
He had intended the night's sleep, hours past his due. In Cloud Recesses, so close to dawn, time bares itself, obscene. But they are locusts swarmed around one... business woman's hospitality, smell of cold, damp plaster and stabs of ill polished floor under their feet. A pleasure house, Wei Ying gave the name. In mistress Tamaiu's servant quarters, stifled and short like crammed beads on jade string.
And their friendly invaders, sharing the enclosures, a girl spread worn and thin like wool skein before Lan Wangji's own. He does not stir her — barely lingers, hovered and plain, to watch the gleaming, swirled swell of her magic light, playful against the relative, silent discipline of a fire talisman. He gentles down, billowed whites and half the ship's ash scattered like scrying filigree, scattered on their floors — turned away with one hand, at the last moment, when he takes both knees, to leash his silks away from imposing on the girl.
And she asks, of no one in particular —
...ah. ]
Apologies.
[ A simple gift, cleanly given. A diplomatic complication. The due of children. His mouth rounds the sound, hands chained in his lap, until he remembers himself — the tatters of care — and reaches into his resting place for the one priceless possession still afforded to him: wool spread, struggling feebly to keep the fealty of every frayed thread. Offered, before the girl. Hello. ]