I entered the galley and found it split in two: the main kitchen, all steam and shouting, and a pocket of tables and benches crammed in so tight there was hardly room to breathe between them. They were already full: maids, butlers, guards, stable boys, everyone together, talking over one another, laughing in a way I had not heard in the corridors. Out in the keep they wore stillness like armour. In here, for a little while, they let it drop.
"Come on in, laddie." Angus peered around a vast stove, a pot hugged to his chest. "Find yerself a seat. Food's nearly up."
He hauled the pot to the tables, bowls already waiting in stacks. When he poured thick, meaty stew, each bowl went to the nearest hands and travelled down the line. A younger cook followed with loaves, face set with concentration, like the bread might escape if he blinked.
I scanned the benches. No gap. None. Just elbows and knees and trays.
Finished with the pot, Angus caught my shoulders and shoved.
"Ye make yer own space, laddie," he said, not unkind.
I stumbled into a row and wedged in tight. Lune was beside me, tearing bread into her stew, jaw tight, eyes on her bowl like the meal were another task to get through. Our shoulders pressed; there was no polite inch of air between us. A bowl thunked down in front of me.
"Dig in," Angus called. "Family recipe. Best stew for miles."
"That's because it's the only stew for miles!" someone shouted from the far end. The table erupted. Angus pointed a ladle in that direction.
"I heard that, ye wee shit," he said, grinning, and vanished back toward the stoves while laughter chased him.
It felt less like a mess hall than a loud, uneven family, one that would roast you and pass you bread in the same breath.
I watched for the edge of the joke, where the warmth stopped and the hierarchy started again. I was still outside that line, a guest at someone else's fire, and I knew the warmth could turn without warning if I cost them time.
I glanced at Lune. She had already half-finished.
"I am sorry," I said, quiet enough that it did not carry. "For yesterday. For the wait. I will learn fast. I will try not to trip you up."
She chewed, swallowed, sat a little straighter. For a second I thought she would ignore me.
"Look." Her voice was flat. "It is not your fault you arrived when you did. There is too much to do and not enough hands. We are understaffed for an event this size; everyone is on overtime. Training someone new is work on top of work, and we do not have spare hours to pretend we do." She finally looked at me, quick, assessing. "Just… do your best. And try not to mess it up."
The word sat oddly in her mouth, like a key turned in the wrong lock. I had not expected it from someone so careful in the corridors. Here, though, nobody flinched.
It told me something useful if I was willing to listen: Lune calibrated herself to the room the same way she calibrated a place setting. The person in the corridor was not softer than the person on the bench, only more armoured.
"Now eat," she added, "before one of these animals steals your bowl."
Chuckles rippled around us; eyes flicked to my stew. I ate faster than was dignified. Hot food, full flavour; it had been days of travel rations and stale water. I was not about to lose this to a joke.
When bowls emptied and conversations thinned, people peeled away. Space opened along the benches. Lune and I stayed pinned together a moment longer, whether from habit or because neither of us wanted to be the first to wriggle free, I could not tell. Then she shifted, stood, brushed crumbs from her apron like they offended her.
"I am off to Mia," she said toward the kitchen. "Thanks for the food, Angus. It was good."
At the door she paused, not quite the same pause as last night, but close enough to snag my attention.
"Watson at eight," she said. "Do not make me come find you."
Then she was gone.
I thanked Angus, found Watson's office by memory, and knocked on the frame. The door sat ajar, as before.
"Yes?"
"Edgar, sir."
"Of course. Come in, my boy."
There was barely room to enter. Watson waved me toward a stool crammed in the corner, and looked me over as I sat, quick, practised, the way a man checks kit before a march.
"The clothes suit you," he said. "You clean up well enough." A flicker of humour, then none. "Unfortunate timing, your arrival. We are preparing for one of the largest events of the year: a ball honouring the peace between Avaria and Kokoro. Royal households from both kingdoms under one roof. You can imagine the standard. Everything must be beyond perfect."
I could. I still was not sure how anything could be beyond perfect, but the pressure in his voice made the phrase mean something anyway.
"What should I do, sir?" I asked. "I know a little: low nobility, a wealthy house back in Crystalport. Not… this."
"I have set you to shadow Lune for the week," Watson said. "You do what she does, when she does it. When she is with Lady Mia, she will assign you tasks that fit the gap. I will pull you aside for finer points of etiquette as I can. For the ball itself, you will work mostly behind the scenes, out of the public eye until you are ready."
I nodded. Hidden from guests did not mean hidden from judgement.
Shadowing Lune sounded like being glued to the smartest person in the room and hoping some of it rubbed off. It also sounded like every mistake I made would land at her feet first, which was either protection or a sentence, depending on the day.
"That will be all for tonight," he said, already turning to his quill. "Rest. You will meet Lune for breakfast at six, servants' wing. Do not be late."
The evening blurred into bells and strange dreams. Morning came sharp: bells again, closer, insistent.
I dressed until I hit the same wall as yesterday: the bow tie. Lune had tied it; she had not taught me. I was still wrestling with the silk when my door banged open.
"Edgar, move, or you will miss …"
She stopped. Her eyes went to the empty bed first, then found me at the mirror, fingers tangled in the knot I had half-strangled.
She exhaled through her nose. "Come here."
She crossed the small room in three steps, turned me with a hand on my shoulder, impersonal, efficient, and fixed the tie the way you might straighten a crooked picture frame. Her fingertips brushed my collar; I fixed my eyes on the mirror's edge so I would not stare at her reflection beside mine in the glass.
"You will learn to do this yourself," she said. "Not now. Now we eat."
She stepped back, smoothed my lapels once, and looked me over the way she had in the changing room: checking standards, not me. "Presentable. Good. Let us go."
The galley that morning was nothing like the night before.
No lazy laughter, just bodies moving fast, plates grabbed mid-stride, people eating standing up when they ate at all. Fifteen minutes, Lune had said yesterday; I believed it now. The house's breakfast still had to happen after ours.
Lune thrust a plate of eggs, sausage, and porridge into my hands and ate standing beside me, jaw set. The food was better than I deserved to expect. Not gruel. Not punishment rations. Someone in this keep understood that hungry staff made stupid mistakes.
We finished; she did not wait to see if I would savour it.
The main dining hall swallowed sound. Tables stretched in long ranks, more than I could count without losing track. Half the room gleamed, already dressed for guests; the other half looked like a workshop, linens stacked, silver waiting, chairs pulled at odd angles.
"I am due with Lady Mia," Lune said, walking as she talked. "I will show you the place setting once. Your job this morning is to continue the block we start."
She demonstrated once: napkin fold, placemat square to the table edge, glasses inverted against dust, knives and forks measured by eye until the spacing looked inevitable. It took perhaps ten minutes for a single seat. Then she stepped back.
"Like that. Every time." Her eyes met mine, hard. "Perfect means perfect. No shortcuts."
"I understand."
"Do you." It was not a question she wanted answered aloud. "I have to go. Keep working this section. When someone else comes through, they will take another block. Do not undo their work trying to help."
She left without looking back.
I started.
I used the first finished place as my template, stole a spare knife when I needed a straight edge, measured gaps until my eyes ached. Every time doubt crawled in, I walked back to her example and compared cloth to cloth, rim to rim. An hour slid past. Two. Sun climbed the tall windows, then crossed them.
I looked down the table.
One table. Not even the full length, just the stretch we had begun together.
Am I this slow, I thought, or is the standard actually this heavy?
I tried to speed up. Precision wobbled; I stripped a setting and began again until it matched. Another butler appeared at the far end, worked in swift, economical movements, and left before I could steal a technique. His table finished, mine still a crawl.
More staff drifted through as the day went on, each claiming a pocket of the room between other duties. A group effort, I realised: no one person was meant to swallow the hall. That should have relieved me. Instead I felt foolish for not seeing it sooner, and stubborn enough to keep my section right even if I could not keep it fast.
I missed lunch without noticing. The hall went quiet; light shifted toward amber. My third table took forever. My fourth began in shadow.
Footsteps, sharp and fast, familiar.
I looked up too quickly. The room tilted for a moment before settling, the long lines of tables swimming back into place. I had not realised how long I had been staring down at linen and silver until lifting my head felt like surfacing.
Lune stood in the doorway, lamplight behind her, her expression unreadable until she stepped closer.
"What are you still doing in here?"
"I…"
My voice came out thinner than I expected. I cleared my throat and tried again.
"I lost track of the time."
She did not answer immediately. Her eyes moved over me instead, quick and precise, the same way she checked a place setting. Taking in more than I wanted her to.
"Angus said you never came for supper," she said. "I did not see you at the servants' meal."
A pause.
"Do not tell me you have been in this hall since breakfast."
I hesitated.
That was enough.
"Hell." It was barely breath, more exhale than word. She pinched the bridge of her nose, then dropped her hand, irritation settling back into place like a mask. "On purpose?"
"You said we should finish tasks," I said. Even to my own ears it sounded wrong, too rigid, like I had followed the letter and missed the sense. "Yesterday. Everything to completion. Highest standard. I thought if I stopped, I would lose the thread, or someone would think I had slacked."
Her jaw tightened.
"That rule is for your list," she said. "Your assigned work. Not a ballroom the entire house builds together."
"I did not know."
"I know you did not." Flat. Not unkind. "That is the problem."
She moved past me, slower now, walking to the nearest table. Her fingers hovered over a napkin corner, a glass stem, a fork tine. Checking without touching. I watched her instead of the room, because it was easier than thinking about the way my hands had started to feel unsteady.
"You are not fast," she said at last.
Heat crawled up my neck.
"But it is not sloppy." A beat. "You did not cheat the spacing because you were tired."
"I tried."
"I see that."
Three words. No softness, but no edge either. They landed heavier than praise would have.
She glanced toward me again, sharper this time.
"You are shaking."
I had not noticed until she said it. Now that I did, I could not stop. The faint tremor in my fingers. The hollow pull in my stomach turning sharp all at once.
"You missed meals," she said. "On purpose?"
"No. I just…" I stopped. There was not a version of it that sounded better out loud. "I thought finishing mattered more."
Her expression shifted. Not softer, but something close to it. Frustration edged with something else.
"Starving does not make you diligent," she said. "It makes you useless by the fourth fork."
I let out a breath I had not realised I was holding.
"I am sorry. I did not mean to worry…"
"I am not worried." The correction came quick and clean. "I am responsible. There is a difference."
Silence settled between us. Her responsibility, my mistake, neither of us quite willing to dress it up as anything else.
She exhaled, slower this time.
"Galley. Now," she said. "There will be cold plates left, or bread and cheese if Angus has already locked the pots. You eat. Then you sleep."
I moved toward the door; she did not walk beside me. Ahead, always a pace in front, the way you led someone who still needed leading.
At the threshold she stopped without turning.
"Tomorrow," she said, "I will show you the tie properly. And I will be clearer about what done means in a house this size." A pause. "Do not skip meals again, Edgar. If you make me explain that twice, I will assume you are doing it on purpose to make a point."
"I am not."
"Good."
She went. I followed the line of her shoulders down the corridor, hungry and tired and oddly hollow with the shape of those three words still in my ear, I see that, as if they were a gift left on the doorstep.
The galley opened ahead, lamps low, benches mostly empty. Before I could say anything useful, Lune angled off down a side passage without looking back and was gone. I stood there with my stomach gnawing and my face still too warm from the hall.
I looked toward the kitchen. Angus leaned out from behind a stove, grinning like a man who had won a bet with himself.
"Havin' a wee lovers' spat, are we, eh, laddie?"
"No. I … we are not … I …" The words tripped over each other. I sounded guilty of something I had not even decided I wanted.
"Never mind that." He pressed a bowl into my hands. "Here. I saved ye a bowl. Pasta tonight. It is not hot, but you are late. Get it down, then off to bed with ye. I will be seein' ye tomorrow."
He headed out, wiping his hands on his apron, leaving me alone with cold pasta and the ghost of his joke still needling at my ears.