"Let's hope we never find out." His voice is calm, his hands are steady, but there's a flash in his eyes that speaks to the lie that is the exterior.

This world is dangerous. There aren't rumors, isn't a Newspaper Club, aren't jealous peers. It's not a social and political landscape he can navigate, controlling the flow of information and protecting his fellow club members that way. It's a world of physical dangers. Of illness and injury, where it's survival, not reputation, at stake.

And he doesn't know how to protect them here. "Do your hands feel better?"