She bowed without hesitation.
Immediate, complete — and was moving before she had finished straightening, taking the lead down the corridor with the specific bright, uncertain quality of a nineteen-year-old who had been given a task by someone who had just given her a decade of cultivation in four seconds and was treating the task as the only important thing currently happening.
He followed.
His hands went behind his back.
The other servants in the corridor had their heads bowed — the specific row of bent necks and still bodies of people who had seen something they were still processing and had defaulted to the posture that covered the most categories of appropriate response.
The queen stood where he had left her.
Head down.
The corridor was quiet except for the retreating sound of his footsteps and the lighter sound of the maid's ahead of them.
She looked at the floor.
