"Immobilise them," he mouths back, half ripple, half murmur, the better part of his attention trained on the men who pore ambitiously over the world's least formidable card spread. Even Lan Wangji, excused of knowing both games of cards broadly and this hand in particular, can tell they've lucked out of the appropriate combination.

There is a moment, between the drip-drip of their confused negotiations over the next hand, when Wangji fears they might nearly turn around to discover the looming presences behind them. That they might wake to the danger that brackets them.

Blinking slow, resolute and owlish, Lan Wangji drifts his sword unpeeled from her sheath, carefully waving it towards the waiting world of the guardsmen, as if to simulate he is all too ready to initiate, if Yelena has finalised her objections.