[ He genuinely believes she's giving it due thought, which is perfect, and clearly why they've always meshed. Despite the way she's changed and grown, the things she's seen and done in her time away — things he still wants to know, all of it that she's willing to tell — it's easy to fall into a rhythm that's been theirs from the start.

The salute gets a brief smirk from him, and then her question prompts a shift in his eyes, a bit more serious. ]

It's the first time since we've been here, and I mean from the very beginning, that I've felt the abnormal movement of time. The way it's been tampered with, manipulated like a spider tugging its web. I can see it, the outline of it, the shape of things gone astray. Bit like — [ Brief pause, and then — ]

Say you wear glasses to see and you take the glasses off and everything's blurry, fuzzy, sideways and backwards and all wrong. That's Yancai. But it won't stay that way, not if I have anything to say about it. And I do have a lot to say, generally, about everything.