You're extraordinarily bad at making friends, [is mild even as he mentally marks Aleksandra with all the zeal of a naughty boy dog-earing a significant page in a borrowed book.]

And here I thought we might be useful to one another. If I were to trust you and your opinion on dangerous things, who knows what insights from within Thorne I might bring you. I imagine a clever girl advantageously positioned in the Free Cities might be able to find some value in that.

[The rap of his fingers at the head of the cane hooked over the chair's arm is the most idle form of punctuation. Ralston's smile is unaltered, loosely hanging on his features like a coat from a hook.]

To say nothing of the fact that I am here with him and you are there so far away and how you might find it convenient to have a confidant in the man beside him. Who might act as a warning, as it were.

[He doesn't trust you, he'd said. But maybe the real answer is He knows you're frightened of him.]