She left before the estate was fully awake.
The sky was the particular dark that came just before the first grey, not night anymore but not morning yet, the kind of hour that belonged to neither. She had her bag packed light, civilian clothes over her butler's underpinnings, the token in the interior pocket of her coat where it sat against her ribs with its particular weight. The civilian papers were in the bag's outer pocket where they could be reached without unpacking everything.
She went to the stable herself. The night groom was a young demon with vestigial wing stubs along his shoulder blades who startled when she appeared and then recognized her and moved without being told to prepare the horse she used for estate errands, a compact grey creature with one eye that was slightly larger than the other and a disposition that was not friendly but was reliable, which was what she needed.
