"I do!" Vallynn downs the rest of his strawberry wine and asks the bartender for another one. "And now that you're all caught up on my life, do you have anything less vague than 'can't complain' to say about yours?"

"Can't get anything past you."

"Were you even trying?"

"Not really."

"So?"

"I can't tell you much. As in, I am literally magically prevented from even forming the intention of telling you stuff."

"—wait, seriously? How does that work, how does the spell know what you're supposed to be allowed to say—"

He shrugs and taps the clear stone attached to his earring.

"—is the enchantment on the stone? So you could take it off?"

"The stone continually renews an enchantment on me, as I understand it."

"I mean that's how enchantments work in general but maybe if they specified that they might mean something else?"

"And I can't form an intention to remove the enchantment either and I must try to stop anyone from trying to remove it or dispel it and if I lose it anyway then I'm not allowed back at the Guild and if I tell anyone anything they're also obligated to hunt me down and destroy me completely."

"...that's thorough. But wait, isn't a dangling earring—" He pauses. Squints. "It's not actually the earring, is it. That's just to draw the attention."

"That would be a smart thing for them to do."

"Fucking Hel, man, are you not even allowed to acknowledge that?"

He smiles pleasantly.

"Gods that sounds stifling." Even if it's fascinating, he wants to stare at it.

"It's not so bad most of the time."

"Until you have to interact with anyone out of the Guild. —you can talk to people about the Guild in the Guild, yes?"

He laughs. "Yeah, I can."

"Freyja on ice skates, man. Well, can you not just tell me what you can tell me?"

"...I can't say anything related to where the Guild's located, I can't tell you about anyone else who's in the Guild, I can't even actually confirm one way or another whether Alph is in it."

"Skills? Personal growth? Bounties?" he suggests, fishing for anything at all.