It’s funny: if she’s speaking trade, it isn’t a very difficult thing to crisp up her vowels, shift the way she holds her mouth, lean into the aspects of her accent that make less sense in Val Royeaux and she can sound as Minrathousian as she likes, months ago stepping easily into the role of a prissy bureaucratic go-between. In her conversational Tevene, though, it is inescapably shaped by the men she most frequently conversed with,

and it is difficult for those sanded down edges to remain that way, when one is likewise inescapably shaped by one’s pursuits.

“Perhaps you’ve heard of the Walrus,” she suggests, “and her captain.”

If her feelings on both ship and man remain complicated — scraps of stolen correspondence are little to the investment lost, even if they are not nothing and even if the frog might as well rail against the scorpion — there is none of that in her voice or demeanour. It is not unknown that James Flint, captain of the Walrus, had loitered in Kirkwall attached to this same company; that he had commanded, for a time, their Forces division. It is probably harder to imagine Madame de Cedoux in his company, although certain corners of Hightown have colourfully elaborated on the possibilities.

“I think he did not intend to be held to the offer made, when he made it. Nevertheless.”