She did not arrange it — it was the natural geography of the exit, both of us heading for the elevator at the same moment. She had the expression of someone who has calculated what she wants to say and is prepared to say it accurately.
"The preamble," she said.
"The cross-jurisdictional framework preamble," I said.
"Findable and present." She looked at me with the ice-blue eyes that I had spent several months learning were not cold — strategic, rather. Clear and strategic. "I read the ratification documentation. The language is new. Not in the model framework literature."
"It came from a specific source," I said. "Someone who understood the function from the inside."
"Your grandmother," she said.
I looked at her.
"I read the full authority determination," she said. "Including the ap
