It's at this point that Keltham notices that, like, you're not supposed to rush setting up your legal forms, or hurrying to sign a contract, and that this situation could potentially be rushing him to do that.
And this does seem - well, everything here is so simultaneously alien and trope-laden that it all looks like a script on some level, about a world with economicmagic, but still, that Maillol-Ione interaction could be a script? Or does it just feel that way because nobody else is speaking up? Chelish people stay silent in class too, unfortunately. Ione is the one who ever speaks up anyways, and she's already talking.
"There were a lot of issues to be hammered out even in an interim contract meant to be replaced," Keltham says out loud. "What's the minimum content of a contract like that which would keep Manohar out?"