"I haven't decided how long I want to stay."

"This is the most fun I've had in months."

"It tops placing several thousand dried beans on your follower's bed?"

"Well, I didn't get to see his face afterward."

"Wait, you did what now?"

"ImpSec has been having me followed. I counter-followed the latest agent, broke into his hotel room, straightened up his bed, and carefully covered it in neat rows of dried beans. Unfortunately I had no way of intercepting his report. Have you read it, any of you? Was it good?"

"Simon brought it up over dinner recently. 'Abject puzzlement', I think was the phrase he used."

"It conjured up an entertaining image and prompted a lot of speculation about your motives."

Mark grins. "Perfect."

"I told Simon he should consider just inviting you to have lunch with an ImpSec agent every now and again. We concluded that you would certainly order something with beans in it in the event you accepted."

"It's almost like you know me."

"Well, we've met you. Knowing you might be a high bar to clear."

"Seems that way."

"Why did you put beans on this fellow's bed?"

"To confuse the hell out of him and everyone who heard about it. And make Miles laugh. And demonstrate to Simon Illyan both that I can run rings around the kind of agents he's sending after me and that I don't plan to do them any actual harm with this power. And entertain myself with the thought of the look on his face. And because I could."

"But why beans?"

"Because they're easy to get ahold of and cover a surface with, and they're unexpected to the point of being surreal."

"Did you arrange them all yourself or did you have help?" wonders Linya.

"Oh, by myself, of course. Were you imagining that I have friends? Desist."

(Ouch.)

"My thought was more along the lines of 'bribed a hotel maid'."

"Bribery is traceable."

"Why haven't you made any friends?"

"For some reason," he says, "people tend to find me off-putting."

"What, even people who've never heard of Miles to compare you to?"