"Delegate Tallandria?"

She is never going to find that fucking Torag priest. 

"Yes?"

"I'm on staff for the Duchess of Chelam, do you have a minute?"

- who just gave a very good speech in favor of easy publishing, even if she does obviously seethe with disdain for the commoners and think they're all idiots.

Really, of course, Korva would have time even if Mr Fine Oratory From A Child Of Egorian had a staffer who wanted to talk; Ardiaca may be right that she's enough of a piece for people to take notice of, but this doesn't really mean she has any cards yet, and there's really only one way to get them.

"Of course."

"Right. I have been working for the Duchess for a year now, and she is terrifying and confusing but she hasn't had anyone executed except for rape and murder and banditry, and she always pays on time, and she does the thing she says she'll do though half the time one can't really understand what she's saying she'll do because she's from Axis and an alien. And she wants to hire you, because when you say things they make sense....to normal people. I don't know if they make sense to her or not but she's noticed they make sense to everyone else."

It's not that fucking hard! .....it's probably hard if you're from Axis and an alien. She suddenly feels less angry, because she's now imagining that the duchess literally used to be an alien and is trying to fit back into a human body now, and probably anyone would feel like they were among barbarians in that situation.

"Uh. Hire me to do what, exactly." She's not sure she's opposed to naked bribery, but this sounds like it's going to be naked bribery, and probably the Duchess de Chelam will not magically agree with her about everything, what with the being an alien and a noble and her being from a demographic she seethes with contempt for (although it's possible that that demographic is "humans").

"Help her write speeches and pamphlets that make sense to people who aren't aliens."

...oh. She feels different about that than about being bribed to give her own speeches on the Duchess de Chelam's marching orders.

You can't really refuse to work with someone because you're mad that they previously tried to cut you out of getting to make any decisions. Unless you're five, and it's honestly pretty contemptible even if you're five. The technical term for this situation is "getting what you want". Or, well, it might be; the Duchess de Chelam is not an idiot, whatever else she is, and is probably not going to be easy to influence. But if there were influence to be had, just by speaking, it would be from that position.

There's some question of whether this would be a rejection of Ardiaca's offer, but she - doesn't think it is? This seems pretty convention-bounded.

"Then - if the Duchess de Chelam intends to speak for the good of the people of Cheliax, as she did today, then I would be honored to help her polish the words."

"We're honored. I'll tell her. ...maybe you can also help her with her internal speeches to the staff, those are also really confusing."

"....if she actually wants help with that, yeah, uh, I actually probably can." Assuming the Duchess de Chelam doesn't already have some kind of alien translation apparatus and is way more incomprehensible without prep time than she is during her speeches, which, you know, maybe.

Then mission accomplished Mariona will trot back over so the Duchess can tell the hiring people to write Korva a contract.

It has not yet occurred to Korva that this might involve a contract, so she won't know to freak out about that until later.