"You will forgive me," Benevenuta says, turning only very slightly to permit that they are speaking together and not missing a beat to do it, her tone warm amusement, "for being one of them."

It isn't that she isn't very fond of Korrin Ataash. She is. Korrin is an interesting and formidable woman that she thinks highly of, a valuable voice on a Council that has sometimes felt like lurching drunken from crisis to crisis, pulling in different directions like a herd of angry cats. (One more voice against Vivienne's old guard politics, if she's honest - Benevenuta is not unaware of a tendency to lump her in with that, but she doubts Vivienne is stupid enough to think they align further than how they play the game.) Korrin is simply also quite possibly the least diplomatic person she's ever encountered, stubborn, capable of her own particular kind of close-mindedness, and - she is certain - unlikely to have any desire whatsoever to be considered appropriate for something like a ball in the Winter Palace.

"Dorian, I think, suffices if we wish a cat among the pigeons." Rather than a bull in a tea shop.