Introducing Listeria earlier than the second act is a good thing. In general it’s usually not a good idea to introduce viewpoint characters (I’m assuming here that not only is Listeria a POV character, she’s also important, e.g. this isn’t the only chapter with her viewpoint) in later acts of the book.
You do a great job of cutting back on the word ‘had’, four instances compared to 42 the last chapter. It makes the story flow a lot better. Unfortunately I did notice a new word of the day here, the word being ‘those’. You’ve got those women, those puppets, those rumours, those countries, those voices, those three. I kept thinking, what women? Which countries? It feels like you want to flesh out the world without actually fleshing it out. I have no idea what ‘those’ actually refer to. It might look mysterious, but it feels annoying.
What you said in your submission, that you mainly wrote this chapter to flesh out the world, made me very alert for the start of an info-dump, and it happens pretty quick. LTU already pointed out the moment in the conversation. After that it’s info dump disguised as a conversation, to a greater or lesser degree until the scene break. Since you’ve already seen this I won’t belabour the point.
The best part for me comes after the scene break, a conversation between two interesting characters, rather than an exposition masquerading as one. Very good, I enjoyed it a lot.
One more small thing, your chapter heading says chapter four, instead of chapter five.