I well — ah — recollect our first meeting. You averred with — um — coruscant eyes that peace was your, er, sole desire once you had — ah, um — executed the will of the gods. I affirmed? Avowed that it was mine likewise. In concert we have conferred with Brigadier Erne and the calde. You are a hero, um, heroine to the — ah — populace. There is talk of a statue, hey? A word from you, your support…”

“Be quiet,” she told him. “I haven’t had a moment to get used to the idea that the Ayuntamiento’s made up of chems, and now this.”

“If I, ah—”

“Be quiet, I said!” She drew a deep breath, running the fingers of both hands through her short brown hair. “To begin with, no, you may not call me Maytera. Not in private, and not any other time. If His Cognizance will release me, I mean to return to secular life. I,” another breath, “may marry. We’ll see. As for you, if this Patera Incus has in fact been named Prolocutor by Scylla, then he is Prolocutor, regardless of any arrangement that he and Patera Quetzal may make. I can readily imagine a younger man of great sanctity deferring to a much older one. Viewed in a certain light, it would be an act of noble self-renunciation. But it wouldn’t alter the fact. He would be our Prolocutor, though he wasn’t called so. Since he proposed that you become his prothonotary, plainly you’re not to be coadjutor any longer. No doubt Patera Quetzal is, in solemn truth, coadjutor. That being so, I’ll call you Patera.”

“My dear young woman!”

Her look silenced him. “I’m not your dear young woman, or anyone’s. I’m thirty-six, and I assure you that for a woman it’s no longer young. Call me General, or I’ll make your life a great deal less pleasant than it has been.”

A door at the far end of the room opened, and someone who was neither Mint nor Remora applauded. “Brava, my dear young general! Simply marvelous! You ought to be on the stage.”