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The court broke the way schools of river fish do when a big shadow passes: not frantic, not sloppy, just cleverly, each piece knowing where it wants to be next so the whole never looks like it has a seam.
Runners went to fetch ink. The archivist sent a boy to wake the lens-runner with a tap code that meant bring the clean glass, not the one you like. The quartermaster wrote down twenty lines of names he intended to argue about and then threw the list away because he remembered he did not get to tell royals which shoes to wear.
The marshal muttered to a captain. The captain tried not to look proud about it and failed a little.
Mia walked the short way back to her rooms, two guards at her left, two at her right, one behind, and one already where she wanted to go because good guards do that. Servants were already running with packs she had had waiting for a week and a half — because Mia's sort of caution looks like foresight when it works.
