"I am going to offer you something," said the stranger. "Listen to all of it before you decide you understand it."
"I've nothing to trade."
"I have not asked for anything."
He stepped closer and Sevrin let him.
"When they cut you, you bleed and you slow down and eventually you stop. When they kill four hundred of yours, you have four hundred fewer. Everything they do to you makes you smaller. That is the arrangement, and it is the only arrangement you have ever fought under, and it is why you are losing." He let that sit. "I am offering you a different arrangement. What is done to you and yours becomes something you can hand back. Not metaphorically. Not eventually. That is all it is."
"And what does it cost."
"Nothing you have."
"Everything costs something."
