It happened the way most things happened, not with a single moment she could point to but with an accumulation of moments that she only recognized as a pattern when she stopped and looked at them together.
It was six weeks in when she noticed it.
The morning brief had been running for three weeks with Valdris, Colt, and whichever department head was relevant, and for the first three weeks she had sat to the side with her notepad and observed and said nothing unless asked. In the fourth week Valdris had begun directing occasional questions to her, not often and not conspicuously, but specifically. In the fifth week she had answered a question in the brief that the department head had not been able to answer immediately because she had read the relevant contract the previous day and retain
