“Right,” she says, her hand having shifted from his shoulder to his arm, where she can more easily get a grip on him anyway — especially at this angle, now that he's the one looming over her and no longer the other way around. She doesn't, cannot, look at the shade of his superior; has no desire to risk it being something spun up out of her past next. “We're in the Free Marches. He isn't.”

A pedantic part of her thinks: well, we don't know that, exactly, but and the rest of her crushes it, ruthlessly, snuffing out the impulse to speak before she can give it voice and confuse the issue.

Vanya looks sufficiently confused as is.

The spirit says, “What do you know about duty, Gwenaëlle?” in a voice that she knows, a voice that she hasn't heard since before the sky cracked open, and her lips press together in a thin line as her fingers dig in harder.