Her expression warms at his accent and this news — and, perhaps, some small amount at this demeanour, familiar as it is — and she says,

“Indeed I may,” in fluent Tevene, the way she speaks it strikingly underlining the similarities to her natural accent (the wrong notes to an Orlesian ear) as well as indicating, as she continues, that the drawing rooms and parlours where she has honed her Orlesian are not where she most usually converses in this language: “I have some familiarity with your ciphers already.”

The way that Tevene had always seemed to rumble out of James Flint’s diaphragm and curl, smokelike into conversation; her prim speech is not that. Still, there is a brisk affect, a particular patter — a specificity to her cadence and even the words she chooses when translating her thoughts — that signposts other habits. She lifts the paper he places down, not immediately unfolding it but instead laying her hand upon the lowest drawer of her desk and opening it with the flare of a cold blue light momentarily aglow in her eyes,

rifling through it a moment, and then resealing it the same way when she finds what she is searching for.

“I expect that you will be obligated to cool your heels whilst I translate your letter,” she says, “so if you would sit, I would be most interested in your introduction. I am Madame de Cedoux.”