Rust and the old bones of metal, brittle and yielding at the slow push of a tentative hand: the door flings itself, to groans from passengers of another cart who look down the aisle to find this last one, bare to the road.

Shen Qingqiu steps first, and Lan Wangji joins behind him, one arm braced at distance in front and before his waist — enough to capture and balance him, should he fall forward, but avoiding touch for the time. They are not yet wedded, never to be bedded, and no other perversion of immodesty need entertain itself between them.

The rest is but routine, a frivolous injection of qi from the wealthy reservoir of his core, propelling the sword to raise itself with fresh weight, and driving it forward at the speed of swallows and littler birds — enough to gain and sustain momentum, never to give the elder reason for sickness.

Finally, cold, harsh sheets of wind scratching his back and nape and the healed cuts that sit his spine, he remembers. "We have left your companions behind." The dead, he means, as Bichen starts her descent. "I shall bring them, alongside the others, on return."

He must head back to the horsecar, after all. If one fool could not negotiate his evacuation, how can the others?