"I know," he said. He did not appear embarrassed. "I woke up in my room." He paused. "The guard was careful."
"I told him to be."
He nodded. He looked at his desk. "I was thinking about something when I fell asleep," he said. "And I woke up still thinking about it. That happens sometimes."
"What were you thinking about?"
He turned the paper on his desk so she could see it. He had drawn — not a mechanism diagram this time, not a map. Something else. A kind of chart, with names and connections between them, the lines annotated with descriptions.
She looked at it.
"The people at the table last night," he said. "I was thinking about how they connected to each other. Not formally — not through title or rank or official relationship. The other connections. The actual ones."
She looked at the chart.
