The Quiet Consort

Dear Maeve,

I stopped a prince in the middle of a sentence today. Forty-three dockworkers might have had to live with the verb he chose, so I put down my headset and told the room what I heard. My face appeared on the conference screen before I had time to look brave.

He could have called it a nuance. Instead he took out a pencil and suspended the article. I have corrected important people before; I am less used to one asking me to show him how the mistake happened. I am also less used to noticing his mouth while he makes it. I wish those two facts had arrived on different afternoons.

We met again with Runa sitting between us. He had invited the workers’ delegate to the next review. In the map room he showed me a border an old king had drawn where he wanted a mountain to be. We made up a more honest label for it. I laughed at work, then went back to my hotel and found I could still hear him laughing too.

This morning the lamp in my booth was repaired. The maintenance slip had his name on it. I have spent years making sure my own name stays on the sentences I can defend, and I don’t know yet what to make of a man who notices the light I work by. I want to ask him. I am afraid he will answer carefully, and more afraid that he won’t.

Talia