"No," Claudius agrees. He remembers that heady cocktail of mixed-yet-strong respect he had for Nie Huaisang. (Perhaps, he thinks wryly to himself, he really will name a cocktail for that man someday.) It's the respect once chess player has for another, when both sides sees their losses as abstract positioning on a board. A pawn can be swapped for any other piece, and count it an improvement, but it's never a true transformation. A piece always ends up discarded. "Thou couldst not," says Claudius, gently sure, "persuade a man who's lost hope that it's better to die. Not even if he desired 't of thee. Nor couldst thou accept the sacrifice of a woman who, in grief for a friend, decided her life was of no moment. Thou saidst this substance was a danger to her."