Commands and Forms

A command is a single word that produces an action. They exist because a household should not need a conversation to run, and because a word carries across a room where an explanation does not. A form is a shape the body holds; the commands name them. Most forms are never commanded — a household that had to be told every time would be a household in difficulty. Forms exist so that nothing has to be said and things still get done; the commands are for exceptions.

A form held well reads as training and grace. A form held badly reads as the lack of both, and reads immediately, because a body is legible in a way speech is not. It is not a statement of feeling. What a form says is that she knows where she is, what her place is, and what is happening around her.

The commands

Given here as vocabulary. Each holds until Well or another instruction unless it completes itself.

Movement: Woemet — come here. Dylwy — go; the matter is finished, not a rebuke. Deswy — follow, behind and to the left. Yoedag — wait; a slave left on Yoedag and forgotten is a failure of the household.
Posture: Elyr — stand: the default, held without being asked. Neilei — kneel, its counterpart. Swyrym — sit, at his feet or on a low stool, because a dinner runs for hours and nobody can kneel that long. Tagfin — lie down; the situation sets the position, and the formal version is used where Marka is not enough.
Presentation: Marka — the formal presentation, kneeling with the hair held up to expose the Koeler; used at a claiming, a sale, and when a household presents her to a guest. Toedda — stand for inspection, as a physician or a buyer requires. Baerroell — turn around. Voech — walk to be seen, at auction or in a salon showing off training. The display stands — Poeger, Keicha, Wyswyr, Slaj, Aswycha — are the poses called at a sale and in the presentation rooms of larger houses; Kaj is the command to enter the display cage there. Tachma — the offering: a thing held up on both palms, kept for what should be seen changing hands.
Dress: Wyndreis — undress; by long tradition the first command given to a newly acquired slave. Dreshira — dress. Drif — dress him, undergarments to ornament, kneeling for anything below the waist. Wyndrif — undress him, in reverse.
Attendance: Wywy — attend close, kneeling beside his chair; a habit of Shining Reach and Eldershore, which Forgegate and Stormharbor think affected. Enfish — the waiting line, several slaves in a row in Elyr, given to a household rather than a person. Chling — hold on, close beside him; household use only, and the one form she may take unasked.
Restraint: Adreshm — offer the wrists, which makes restraint something she does rather than something done to her.
Conduct: Ael-doen — eyes down, for a moment and not as a standing rule. Yuno — quiet; dropped between subjects it is nothing, dropped mid-sentence it is a judgment.
Release: Well — the universal release, and also well done; the two are told apart by tone.

Correction has no vocabulary of its own; it uses the ordinary words, and what makes them corrections is where they land. See Health, Injury, and Correction#Correction.

What she takes unasked

Elyr when not doing anything else. Foesswy constantly. In public, when her owner sits, she kneels and holds until told otherwise. At home she sits, because an evening runs for hours. Chling she may take or be called into. Alone, none of it applies.

The passing courtesy

Foesswy is a brief dip of one knee given to a free person passed in a corridor or on stairs, without stopping, speaking, or waiting to be acknowledged. It is never commanded because it is assumed; the word is said aloud only when it was not done, and then it is a rebuke. Age, injury, and full hands excuse it.

Where she waits and walks

At a table where she is not serving, at his feet, or on a stool if she needs one. In a shop or street, behind him and close on his left — out of his firing side and clear of his reload elbow, the general formation behind any free person. Distance means confidence rather than favor: two or three paces in a city, his shoulder in a crowd, close enough to touch beyond the walls. The right side is where he can reach her fast, used for injury, a new arrival, or bad ground, and is read as care. She moves ahead only to open a door or clear something, and returns at once. She does not ride a Vaelith; riding is an independent act, and taking it is not hers.

Serving

The full drink form is ceremonial and kept for the first drink and for anything that matters enough to be seen handed over; a refill is poured and set down. She approaches, kneels, takes the vessel in both hands, turns the rim toward his hand, holds it out and waits — nothing happens until he chooses to take it — then lowers her head for a beat and rises. The wait is the offering and the beat is the acknowledgment; everything else is delivery. The rise is the last step and needs no release. Taverns use the same logic compressed. Genuine injury changes it: the form serves the meaning, and where the form is impossible the meaning is what matters. Food has no form; clearing has none either.

Guests are served before the host, in the order the city announces them by — Eldershore lineage, Forgegate guild, Clearhold examination rank, Shining Reach senate standing, the Coves captain then specialists then crew. Stormharbor has no order, a Thing being an assembly of men who all have a voice, and a slave serving there is expected to know the room. A spill is an accident and is followed by a cloth, quickly and without comment; what gets corrected is the fuss, not the spill.

The form is the same everywhere and how it is done is not: Clearhold exact, Eldershore warm, Shining Reach a performance the salon judges, Stormharbor plain and quick, Forgegate competent like any job. The Coves barely have a form, and a taken slave made to perform her city's full form in a tavern is the form kept intact with the meaning stripped out — some captains find it funny, and others think less of the man who asked.

The household forms

The bow: A short bend from the waist, hands folded, head down, held longer than a free person's. The bow is for stopping; Foesswy is for passing. She bows a guest in and out and does not bow to him again between.
The door: She opens it, bows, steps back and aside, and holds Elyr. A cloak is taken in both hands and folded, not draped.
Announcement: She follows the guest in, steps aside where she can be seen, announces to the room — the name, then whatever the city counts by — and steps back. Small gatherings skip it.
Departures: Nobody announces leaving. She fetches what he came with, opens the door, and bows him out.
Answering the door: She has no standing to speak with, only her owner's, and says so plainly. She may decide where the case is obvious and she knows what he would want. With no instruction she keeps the caller at the door, takes the name and message, and admits no stranger.
Carrying a light: At his left, half a pace back, because a light behind a man lights nothing he needs.