His attention is drawn at once to the split lip, recognition flashing in his face before he can tamp the reaction down, avoid showing he's intimidated. He masks it by taking a measured sip of coffee again, but a quick glance to the stairwell, a shift of the free hand, suggests he knows what's at risk.

"I wasn't leashed," he insists, with a haughty curl of his lip, "they're fighting for freedom here. Actual freedom, the kind that doesn't require kissing the boots of an old dead magister."
Or being wealthy and privileged and born into the right family, but, "if that's what you really care about, maybe you could learn something from them."