Bella is gazing on the school weavesite when she notices the inconsistent references to Vice Chancellor Embries's secretary. A second look shows that they're all from different years. A look at the public record of the school staff directory confirms: yes. Every secretary of the Vice Chancellor is from a different year. She'd expect he was just dreadful to work for, if it weren't for the way they do virtually always last out the full year -

and for the way none of them have any continued ethernet footprint after the termination of their employment.

Bella compiles this data. She a-mails it to the current secretary with a "probably nothing, just worried" note attached to it.

---

It is the following week when she is summoned to Embries's office.

This does not bode well. But she can't exactly refuse.

She finds one of the Walking Buddies looking for credit from "escort missions" to take her. The walking buddy thinks she's humoring her until Bella disabuses her of the notion that she's generously distributing an easy five-point assignment.

They arrive without incident. The walking buddy leaves; Bella is going to be on her own for the trip back.

But first she has to deal with Embries.

She goes inside, shaking in her boots.

Embries is a silver-haired, urbane man, with a long desk at which he sits in perfect stillness, and Bella feels an odd, intense pressure in her mind when she approaches - there is something out of the ordinary, with his mind or his person or just with him.

"Hello, Ms. Swan," he says. "Do sit down."

Bella sits.

"Do you know," he says, "no one has ever had the temerity to contact one of my secretaries on her own behalf, in a professional capacity, before. They sort my correspondence for me, but by and large, their own communiques are personal in nature. Until they are not in a position to receive anything at all, that is."

This doesn't seem to demand an answer. Bella sits silently, watching his eyes, shifting occasionally under psychic pressure.

"I do wonder why something has changed about this... setup."

Bella swallows.

"Something about the particular secretary, warier or more skittish? Unlikely; she had no traits of any relevance. Something about this age in which we find ourselves, breeding caution and far-off sudden opportunities to prompt career changes? No; the eras differ only superficially. Something about the communique's origin, though..."

Bella makes a small, involuntary noise.

"I think that could easily prompt an irregularity in a comfortable pattern. Don't you agree, Ms. Swan?"

Bella doesn't think she could answer him now if she wanted to.

"Ms. Swan. I find myself very disappointed. Given that you are very nearly a volunteer, venturing towards my attention as you did - surely there is something you have to say for yourself."

She opens her mouth. No sound comes out.

She's long figured out what she's talking to, at this point.