But the specific closeness she had built with the knights — the working distance that had over months become something shorter than working distance — began, gently, to expand.
Not dramatically. Not in a way anyone could point at and name.
But not so quietly that they couldn't feel it.
She knew they felt it. She was not trying to prevent that. She was trying to give herself enough space to think clearly about what she now knew before the thinking got interrupted by the people the thinking was most about.
This was the correct logic.
She was also, she was honest enough to know, afraid.
She filed this and kept working.
***
The Liang Meridian ship was due the following morning.
