The best defense is a good offense; Benevenuta is often frank, for being such an inveterate liar. Under Nerva's renewed scrutiny, she is smilingly inscrutable - nothing to see but what she has decided to show, which in this instance is her cards. Maybe not all of them, not all of what drives her, but all of what drove her to Nerva's side, this evening.

Honesty, she thinks, will get her far with this one. There must be no crack for Nerva to leverage an argument out of.

"I believe it," she reiterates, taking up her book again. "I shall finish my book, then - perhaps another day we might have a game of chess."