"He is a child." This, tainted with the blunted edges of curiosity, of sensing a riddle afoot. Is the boy perhaps so single-minded in his independence that he loathes the admission of his years, tallied on a bead string? Does he think them slight and ridicule? He is so distorted?

The prospect was ever there. Five, likely named to honour the four other sons before him. A spare, no matter death's twisted, potential fortune of removing one or two inheritors before him. Accident and cruelty cannot claim four predecessors. Five will never inherit. And — here, Lan Wangji turns slowly to behold the woman — sisters, at least a pair. It strikes him, inevitably, that a family so blessed with children must number either great coin in their coffers or the bold unaccountability of parents unrestrained.

Suppose Five and Allison and their sister Vanya, and Five's other four brothers, if not more — suppose they were all born to hunger and teeth grinding against their own flesh and mouths dry and bellies unfilled. That would explain so much of the boy's fractious behaviour, twisted like vines growing without pillared direction.

"You will want for safety, but no necessities here."