( His war. It stings, in a manner metallic, like every mouthful of blood he's swallowed on from stab wounds, every gasp that's made him choke. A part of him has risen above petty, learned malice. Another is his namesake, and Hanguang-Jun was born to slaughter. )

My war against you?

( As if ever they have fought another. Distant, the realisation: another siege, against the Patriarch, one night's incursion. More dead littered and reborn then at their feet than throughout the entire Sunshot offensive.

He remembers: viscera like oil, stuck, dried and flaking in craters on his skin. The clutch of his hand clean on Bichen's hilt, the guqin flaying enemy charges through distant vibrations. Another man claimed those deaths, let them bloom on his ledger like river flowers. )

You wish to know how it is I dwindled your people? ( Crassly, cruelly. So they're doing this, then, stripping skin off bone to show off her old wounds. Here, where they're soot and nightmares, and it's a slow trickling like ink dropped when he raises Bichen's blade to deflect an assault of arrows, without turning.

Death can wait, politely, until they have finalised their conversation. )
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