I claimed a narrow stretch of bench in the galley where the wall wore a board of bells, each tag handwritten in ink gone brown at the edges, each string tied to a room I was supposed to find in the dark. The later watch was never crowded. One cook stayed for whatever the house might ask after sensible hours, one maid for spills and sheets and small disasters, one butler to answer those pulls. On an ordinary night that might have meant long stretches of nothing but the kettle and the stoves cooling.
The roster had my name beside that butler slot tonight. It should have felt like trust. Mostly it felt like being the finger in the leak while the rest of the ship pretended the sea was not rising.
Tonight was not ordinary. Half the guest wing was still awake behind closed doors, luggage barely unpacked, candles burning down in strange holders. My feet had only just begun to forgive me for the day when the first bell jerked tight against its spring.
Guest room twelve.
I stood before the echo died, already mapping the route I had walked in daylight until it lived in my legs. A week of memorization had taught me which passages were a stride wider, which turns shaved seconds, which servant doors stuck until you leaned with a shoulder. The narrow corridors behind the guest rooms were built for speed and invisibility, not comfort. I knocked once at the small panel, announced myself because that was the rule, and stepped through.
One of the Avaria dignitaries swayed beside the bed, still in his evening clothes, staring at a bloom of red across the linen like the sheets had betrayed him. Wine, not blood, though the stain spread like something worse in the lamplight. His breath came sweet and heavy; he had clearly carried the meal's generosity upstairs with him.
"I shall fetch the maid to change that immediately, sir. One moment."
In a house like this, some problems came with a second rule nobody wrote on the card by the bell. A butler did not send a maid alone into a noble's room when wine had done half the thinking for him. Work went faster with four hands on a bed, and other things got less likely. I had heard enough kitchen talk to know that some guests kept their hands to themselves only when another man stood in eyeline.
The maid met me in the corridor with fresh linen stacked to her chin, mouth set, eyes tired but awake. By the time we returned together, the dignitary had folded into a chair, chin on his chest, snoring through his nose like a man who had spent every coin of his dignity on the last bottle. We worked quiet and fast, old sheet off, new one snapped straight, corners tucked with the same precision Lune would have wanted if she had been there to see. He did not wake. We left him to his dreams and his shame.
Moments like that reminded me how thin the rules were: a door, a bell, a drunk man's mood. The house pretended those things were predictable. My pulse still ran fast until we were back in the corridor.
I had barely set foot in the galley again when the cook lifted his chin from the pass. "Room six."
I pivoted and went back out.
Room six wanted a midnight tray, nothing named, only something light before sleep. I carried the order to the kitchen, waited while bread and cheese and sliced fruit were arranged to look like an accident of plenty rather than a meal, and had almost lifted it when the maid called past me toward the board. "Room eighteen."
Room eighteen apologized before I finished bowing. They had caught a bell rope on an elbow on the way to bed; they did not need me, only my forgiveness for dragging me out of breath. I said what politeness required, went back to the pass for the tray meant for room six, and started the corridor again while the building laughed at the idea of a straight line.
The night wore on that way: bell, corridor, door, need, kitchen, corridor, bell. Sometimes the needs stacked like cards until I carried three errands in my head and hoped none of them would ring again before I closed the last one out. My calves ached. My throat stayed dry no matter how often I passed the water butt. Somewhere toward the hour when even the keep's stone seemed to exhale, the calls thinned, then stopped, like the whole guest wing had finally agreed to sleep at once.
I sank onto the bench beside the maid. The cook had moved to a chopping board, rhythm steady, onions and carrots falling into neat pieces for a soup that belonged to a morning still hours off. The maid folded napkins gone stiff from the evening service, creasing them back into shape. No one spoke much. We were all still working, still useful, still part of the machine even when the bells were silent. I found a tray of silver gone dull and began to polish, cloth circling until the metal warmed under my palm. There was no roster for this part of the watch. You took what sat in front of you and you stayed ready for the next ring.
When the sky beyond the high windows went from black to something bruised and thin, the cook slid bowls toward us before the morning bell could call the rest of the house down on our heads. The porridge steamed; the bread tore soft. Eating hot food without jostling for bench space or listening for Watson's voice over my shoulder felt almost indecent, a private kindness at the end of a long shift.
I ate lighter than I wanted, knowing sleep would come easier if I did not load my stomach like a feast hall. Then I climbed to my room, boots left beside the door, shirt half unbuttoned before I hit the mattress. The pillow swallowed me. A sound left my chest that might have been relief or surrender.
The morning bell rang down the corridor. I dragged the blanket over my ears. Not for me today. The house could march without me for a few hours. I had earned the quiet.
Footsteps rushed past outside, quick on stone, voices already sharpening for another day. I almost slept through them. Then my door flew open hard enough to slap the wall.
"You slept through the bell." Lune's voice cut the room ahead of her body. "Edgar, get up. You are going to be late."
She moved like the morning had wronged her, snatching clothes from my floor where I had dropped them after the night shift, shaking out a shirt like she could wake me through fabric alone. I groaned and burrowed deeper. Cold air hit my legs as she stripped the blanket away.
"Edgar. This is not the morning to waste."
I cracked one eye. Her hair was pinned tight, cheeks flushed from the stairs, and she still looked ready to drag me upright by the collar if I did not move fast enough.
I almost laughed. "Lune."
"What?"
"I had the night watch." The words came out rough. "I am not late. I am barely asleep."
For half a breath I thought I had won something petty: Lune wrong-footed for once, the roster turned against her instead of me.
She went still. The shirt in her hands lowered inch by inch. Her gaze jumped to my face, then to the blanket she had thrown aside, then to the door like the corridor might explain what I had just said.
"Oh." The syllable fell small. "You are on the roster. I did not… I did not see your name for last night."
I levered myself up on one elbow, squinting into the light. "Can I have the sheets back? It is cold."
Color drained from her face, then rushed back in. She thrust the blanket at me, awkward, almost gentle, tucking the edge under my chin with hands that had forgotten how sharp they were supposed to be.
"I am sorry," she said, softer than I was used to hearing from her. "I did not notice. Sleep well. The day after a night shift always feels wrong."
She turned toward the door.
"What, no goodnight kiss on the forehead?" I murmured into the fold of linen, half joking because my mouth had been tired longer than my body.
She looked back. No smile. No warmth.
"Do not push it, Edgar."
The room went cold anyway. I shivered, pulled the blanket tighter, and wondered if I had mistaken exhaustion for courage. Maybe I had.
I told myself the joke had been a stupid way to reclaim a scrap of footing after she had apologized. I also knew, unpleasantly, that I had wanted to see whether softness lasted once she remembered who she was supposed to be.
I closed my eyes while the corridor outside filled again with the ordinary noise of people who had slept through the dark and woke ready to judge the ones who had not.