They'll arrange one swiftly, of course. She doesn't want this feud either, and had planned already to spend the whole rest of the day trying to avoid factions. If that requires ducking out of other committee meetings to see him in person, so be it. And she will greet him first, and with slightly more respect than a duchess ordinarily owes a count from halfway across the country. 

"Your grace. I must confess, I found myself surprised by what happened in the safe roads committee."

"You have my profound apologies," she says at once. "A majority of the committee votes on my recommendation, which is adequate for every other matter before the committee; but not the two thirds majority the rules require for new members. The committee is much improved, now, but you were done wrongly by in the process. What can I do to make it right?"

He bites down on his first response. She's responding correctly, and while he can be angry he cannot tear into a duchess who is apologizing for the slight. Being mad at her politics doesn't change that, and for all that she works with the man she isn't Xavier - it's not as though he would turn aside aid from an archduke lightly either.

"I find myself uncertain. I would have expected we both know they have no place on the committee, particularly not once they have gotten the sense that they can win thereby, but had you simply needed to be seen opposing me in order to get enough votes there to remove them I would have done so gladly. I think before anything else I must understand."

"If you want to try to ban the Calistrian Church from the country entirely you will have my support. But as I know you've contemplated, it's a matter that favors ambush." What in the world are you hoping to accomplish by irritating the Calistrians on a small scale and telling them you want to be rid of them before you have a plan to actually do it? I will charitably assert that you have a clever plan and certainly didn't just fail to think through what you were doing.

"The man is a mail carrier, not a prostitute and not an assassin. If he makes a mistake I'll see him ousted, but I do not actually expect it. Urban Order, or Judiciary, or Virtuous Churches, might all entertain a motion to ban the Church entire and get him thereby."

He had said it because she and her allies had sold out to the radicals and tried to push through a bill that would enshrine their right to proselytize with any text permitted in Absalom, and then forced him to specify because they prioritized scoring political points ahead of the future of Cheliax.

"I don't think it serves either of us or the country that it be made public, particularly before those eager to test the slander decree have time to experience the consequences for themselves, but I had rather expected that the minutes from the first two days to be illuminating there." Especially once you retracted your offer to show them. "Unless it was simply one of the other members that caused issues?"

He's not on any of those committees, due in part to the pushback she and her allies arranged to oppose it and defend safe roads, and virtuous churches is a particular nonstarter given that it's run by the very radicals who are working with the Calistrians. But the others are at least possible for him to go through his allies in.

So yes, you picked the fight with absolutely no way to win it. It's a correct fight to pick but that's hardly an excuse. "The Calistrian was relentlessly reasonable and you'll find nothing in the minutes, once a copy is fetched for you, to condemn him by. Delegate Séfora is indeed politically radical and made tedious and destructive proposals to the effect that the people rule themselves, which the committee duly entertained and rejected, as she is a minority of one. I will be delighted if her conduct presents me with an opportunity to remove her, though I have to put in another elected representative first. If you have a solution to radicals, I am eager to learn of it; it has been our policy to give them no ground, of course, but to consider and reject their proposals in the normal fashion. I believe it suppresses them better than concentrating them on their own radical committees or leaving them at loose ends to compose speeches."

Acevedo doesn't want to hear that from someone fighting on the wrong side. And especially not the last bit, when she's the one who made those damned radical committees in the first place.

"You won't get anywhere by compromising with them, and letting them get the impression that they can win this as long as they dig in their heels long enough for you to back down. If an elected delegate is what you need to see them gone, then I can make introductions to my county's elected representative - I've known the man for years, and he's never given me cause to regret the trust I've extended to him. But for my own part..."

He wants to fight her on this. Wants to try to make her regret the disrespect, and the company she keeps, and especially that she sold out the nation for her own political power. He'd be in the right to do it. But he can't do it without a messy public fight at the moment Cheliax can least afford it, and while he'd have to do it anyway if she was unapologetic about it, even an insincere apology is enough to allow other  options. So instead of throwing her words back into her face, he takes a moment to breathe and forces himself to respond productively.

"It is a terrible thing for the nation that trade is unable to flow in those regions of infernal neglect. Perhaps the infrastructure committee might consider helping fund the repair of bridges where the need is great." 

"Indeed that has been among our committee's highest priorities. Has Acevedo been badly affected by the neglect of our national infrastructure?"

"Yes. The previous count declined to do any work until things collapsed, and then authorized only half measures - I have since seen to the most critical tasks, but there remains much work to be done."

His county isn't the worst off in the archduchy, but where it stands above the others it is largely because he has been more able to solve problems and not because the situation is not dire. It's not a situation that will embarrass her to go before their peers and call a problem.

"I'll get the improvements that your county needs approved and paid for; that is the whole business of that committee, and in the long run it will all pay for itself. And if you recommend an elected to the committee I will easily have the votes for him, even if he has also offended our sortition and our Calistrian and some other man besides. The Queen's Knights are not radicals. The Menadorans are not radicals. There are six sure votes against any idiocy, and half of them from men who paid more for this convention's flirtation with Galtanism than any of us."

It's still something of a bitter pill, as it always is in these affairs, but not so bitter he can't swallow it.

"Thank you for assuaging my concerns, your grace. I'll not take up more of your time."

"You should do so without hesitation, where I may be of service to your people and our country." But not too often but he's not going to misunderstand her there. "May the righteous gods go with you."

"And with you."