Antonio Agramunt is currently agonizing - metaphorically, but it's going to end up literal - about whether Merrin is successfully reading through his Bluff or just picking up on the overtones that he'd meant to put there, based on the description of her thoughts.
Asking to be relieved of duties that might be unpleasant, in Cheliax, is something painfully discouraged, so people won't go around asking to be relieved of unpleasant duties just because they're unpleasant; the resulting punishment, from a Chelish perspective, must be severe enough and extended enough to discourage that as a calculation. Of course failing in those duties is much more severely discouraged, especially in a case like this one, and if you think you might fail and earn that punishment, you'd be wiser to take the lesser one. Forcing your superiors to relieve you by looking incompetent, but without you having actually failed at that point, is discouraged intermediate between the two. Ideally, of course, one can just take on the unpleasant duty and perform it perfectly, and then not be punished at all aside from the duty itself. The question is whether Antonio Agramunt is sufficiently confident he can do that.