Annali. Annali presents as "merely" a sharp clerk but she has the air of one even shrewder, accustomed to running in the circles of the powerful—people such as yourselves. Delja has met her kind many times. Nonetheless Delja sees within Annali the soul of a scholar and judge: her distaste for the kriegstanz is true, she sees herself as above untruths, and she has every intention to honor her obligations.

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"And who," says Annali after a long pause, "might this patron be? We have many across the planes, and not all of them would react well to their privacy being breached through our channel."