" Do you know that in the Archaic Empire, the Master of Spies referred to every agent by the name of a flower or an animal or some such - never by their own names. Not even their sexes were known."
"Sex?" asked Guisarme. "We wouldn't use women as spies, would we?"
There was the briefest pause, as there always is when a dozen men realise that one of their number is a fool. "

― Miles Cameron , The Fell Sword (The Traitor Son Cycle, #2)