Caleb stayed in the alcove for thirty seconds.
The napkin was still folded in his hand. The handwriting held steady through the second read. The shape of the letters was old. The slope belonged to a school extinct now. He had spent eleven years in disposal yards reading carcasses, and the principle was the same. The wound lied first. The body around the wound told the truth. The missing pieces mattered most.
What was missing here was the layer hidden under the one he had seen.
He had walked into the gala with one job. Find a face for a routing entity. He had assumed the routing entity was the deepest piece on the board. The napkin said otherwise. The napkin said the man with the eyes was already on a board with at least one other player, and that the other player was watching them both, and that the man wanted Caleb to know it before Caleb did anything stupid.
Caleb folded the napkin smaller and slid it into his breast pocket.
He walked back into the ballroom.
