I started with sounds.
Not the obvious ones, footsteps, voices, door hinges, the percussive signals of proximity and movement I'd already mastered.
I started with the ones underneath those.
The conversational ones.
The ones people made when they weren't performing for an audience.
The guards changed at six-hour intervals.
I knew this.
What I hadn't fully mapped was what happened in the twenty minutes before and after each change, the overlap time, when the outgoing shift wanted to be done, and the incoming shift hadn't yet settled.
People talked in those windows.
People who'd been holding their professional silence for six hours let it go in the margins.
"Summit preparations are moving to an accelerated timeline."
"Elder Maren's annex has been sealed off; nobody's explain
