He kisses her cheek. "Sorry, I can't really promise anything."

Which leads him to flomp his head on her shoulder again, and sigh, and then slide out of her lap and start pacing back and forth.

"Illyan still hasn't issued you a clearance level that would let me talk to you about - about anything I do when I'm offplanet. It's absurd. Well, no it's not, I know perfectly well why he feels the way he does and it's perfectly logical from someone whose job description is 'most paranoid person on three planets'. It's just I feel like it should be obvious to anyone who's known you longer than a day that you're not a bloody Cetagandan plant, and it's a, a personally offensive decision to keep barring you from the kind of clearance they give out to people like, oh, Mother."