Joan is partisan. To be fair so is Mordred. "I didn't say it was bad, I said you would hate it."

"See, I felt she was biased by spending the first twentysomething years of her life among people who do not know what a spice is."

"You're probably right but to be fair I am also biased in this fashion."

"If we both stick around in Malta long enough maybe I should cook for you, I packed some spices in my bag last time we were in Siam."

"I promise I have ever eaten food with spice in it! But-- maybe."

She finishes her pastry. "Do you want to go up to my place?"

The first time he'd said he shouldn't. Honestly he still shouldn't, Lev wasn't wrong.

"I'd love to."

She smiles. "Excellent."

Is that her hand brushing against his hand as they stand up.

He smiles back. And if it is, he'll hold her hand.

Her hand is very warm and soft and small.

Mordred's hands are usually cold. He is kind of weirdly aware of how warm Inaaya's are.

"I wish I had been to more places," she says. "It's hard, because I'm so young."

She's been to so many places though? "-- how old are you?"

"Nineteen."

"I joined the Emporium when I was sixteen."

"...well, I'm twenty-four and you've been to more places than me," he says, instead of any of the other things he could say.

(When he was sixteen he'd have gone almost anywhere if it wasn't his parents' house. But he had the option of college, and Inaaya didn't, and it's luck, nothing at all but luck, that Mordred isn't in a very similar position.)

"Really? But you're--" She gestures.

"Sorry, I have no idea how that sentence was supposed to end."

"I don't know what Walker's team calls itself, sorry. The way we're the Emporium."

"Oh. We don't really have a name, I think. And I haven't been doing the -- travelling thing -- for very long."

"What did you do before?"

"I wrote, mostly. Broke people out of asylums sometimes."

"Did you?"

She is smiling up at him like he is the coolest person in the world.

Oh no oh no she's so good. "I did! It's -- more Lev's story than mine really --" but he tells her a lightly edited version of getting Lev out of Joy Grove, in which none of the information is false but he gives the impression he was entirely there for Lev rather than primarily being there for Henslowe with Lev as a stretch goal.

"Wow, that's amazing."

"I don't... ever think I've done something that cool."

"In the moment it mostly felt like lying to a receptionist? But it's probably my favorite thing I've ever done."