Publia is not, exactly, in Athénaïs’s charge. Which is to say: she’s not at all in Athénaïs’s charge, but there’s a distinct difference between Tevene defector we can’t trust yet and the Mourn Watch vouched for this one. She, too, is not yet officially entangled enough to have her own crystal and unfettered access to the Crossroads; she does have sufficient cachet with the organisation that the need for their official accompaniments to step out and respond to an urgent crystal message hadn’t been enough of an emergency to warrant ushering Publia out as well.

And she’s sort of curious to see how this goes.

“Hang on,” she says, easy, not reaching out for Publia’s arm because she worked too hard on her eyeliner this morning to waste it taking a backhand from a stroppy vint. “Take this,” she says, loosing a coin purse from her hip and sliding it across the table. “If it looks like you’ve been at it already, you’ll do better.”

She doesn’t expect to get that money back, but that’s fine. It wasn’t hers yesterday.