The morning began with Chamberlain Finch appearing at Evan's door with the expression of a man about to perform surgery without anesthetic while simultaneously filing his taxes.
"Lord Carter," he said, voice strained to the breaking point. "Your court etiquette tutor has arrived."
Evan, who had been attempting to put on a pair of boots that seemed to have developed personal opinions about which foot they belonged to, paused mid-struggle. "I'm sorry, my what?"
"Court etiquette tutor," Finch repeated. "Given your... upcoming audience with Her Majesty, it was deemed necessary by multiple parties with concerns about your... presentation."
"By whom?"
"By everyone with any sense of self-preservation, milord. Also by me. Repeatedly. In writing."
Evan sighed. The left boot, which had been stubbornly refusing to go on his right foot for the past five minutes, finally conceded defeat with a sound that might have been resignation. "Fine. Send them in. But if they're boring, I reserve the right to accidentally improve them into something more interesting. Like a potted plant. Plants are quiet."
Finch's eye twitched. It was becoming a familiar sight. "I'll... convey your terms."
The tutor turned out to be a woman of indeterminate age with posture so perfect she could have been used as a plumb line for construction projects. She wore grey from head to toe—not a single splash of color anywhere—and her expression suggested she had personally witnessed every social faux pas in history and was still recovering from the trauma.
"Lord Carter," she said, bowing exactly three inches—not a millimeter more or less. The bow was timed to perfection, held for precisely the correct duration, and executed with the kind of precision that made Evan feel inadequate just watching it. "I am Madame Genevieve. I will be instructing you in the finer points of courtly decorum."
Evan looked her up and down. "You know, for someone teaching people how to be social, you don't seem very... social."
Madame Genevieve didn't smile. Her face remained perfectly neutral, like a mask carved from marble. "Socialization is not about enjoyment, Lord Carter. It is about survival. Now." She produced a fan from somewhere within her grey robes—it appeared as if by magic, which it probably was. "Lesson one: The language of fans."
She flicked the fan open with a sharp snap that echoed in the room. "A fan held thusly—" she demonstrated, positioning it at a precise angle "—means 'I am bored.'" She shifted it to her other hand. "Thusly means 'I find you tiresome.'" Another shift, more subtle. "This means 'You are a blight upon society and I wish you would spontaneously combust, preferably during dinner so the rest of us can enjoy our dessert in peace.'"
Evan raised an eyebrow. "That's a lot of meaning for something that's essentially just a piece of decorated paper with delusions of grandeur."
"The court is a battlefield, Lord Carter. The fan is merely one of many weapons. Words are another. Posture is another. The exact angle at which you hold your wine glass is another." She snapped the fan shut. "Now. Bowing."
"I think I can manage a bow."
"You think incorrectly." Madame Genevieve circled him like a shark circling prey. "Your current bow says 'I am a peasant who has never seen a chair before, let alone royalty, and I'm not entirely sure which end of myself is up.' We must refine it. Considerably."
For the next hour, Evan learned to bow. Not just any bow—the specific, mathematically precise, exactly-23-degree-angle bow appropriate for greeting a queen. The 17-degree bow for dukes and duchesses. The 12-degree nod for minor nobility. The "almost imperceptible tilt of the head" for people you wanted to insult without being obvious about it. The "aggressive chin raise" that meant "I recognize your existence but barely."
"My neck hurts," Evan complained after the fortieth repetition. "This is actual physical pain. I think my spine is rethinking its life choices."
"Pain is the body's way of learning," Madame Genevieve said without sympathy. "Also, your form is improving. You now look merely incompetent rather than actively hostile. Progress."
"Thanks. That's very encouraging."
"Now. Titles. You will address Her Majesty as 'Your Majesty' for the first address, then 'Ma'am' thereafter. Never 'hey you' or 'Your Royal Highness'—that's for the princess, who you won't meet yet—or, saints forbid, 'Elara.'"
"I wasn't planning on calling her Elara."
"One can never be too careful. I once had a student who addressed a duchess as 'my good woman.' He is now a shepherd in a remote province. The sheep are his only friends."
She produced a list from her robes—a scroll that unrolled impressively, hitting the floor and still having more to go. "Now, the other attendees you are likely to encounter at court. There are the major houses, the minor houses, the ancient houses that no longer have power but still have opinions, the newly elevated houses that have power but no grace, the merchant lords who buy their way into events, the military nobility who think they're better than everyone else, the magical nobility who actually are better than everyone else, and the hangers-on who are just there for the free food."
As she droned on about dukes, duchesses, counts, countesses, barons, baronesses, viscounts, and various other people with entirely too much time on their hands and too many opinions about everything, Evan found his attention wandering.
The sunlight through the window was particularly golden today. Dust motes danced in the beams, performing an intricate ballet that seemed almost choreographed. One of them was doing what looked like a tiny waltz with another dust mote, spinning gracefully before floating off to join its friends.
"Lord Carter," Madame Genevieve said sharply. "Are you listening?"
"Absolutely," Evan lied. "Duchess of Wherever, likes cats, hates turnips, has a cousin who once insulted her hat, holds grudges for approximately three generations. Got it."
The fan snapped open. The "you are a blight upon society and I wish you would spontaneously combust" position.
"Perhaps," Madame Genevieve said icily, "we should move on to table manners. Given your... propensity for destruction and your clear inability to focus on verbal instruction."
The dining table had been set with what appeared to be every piece of cutlery ever invented in the history of human civilization. Forks of various sizes—some with two tines, some with three, some with four, some with what looked like five but might have been a mistake. Spoons that served mysterious purposes—soup spoons, dessert spoons, spoons for things Evan had never heard of. Knives that looked like they could perform surgery or at least fillet a fish with extreme prejudice.
"Start from the outside and work your way in," Madame Genevieve instructed. "The salad fork first. Then the fish fork. Then the main course fork. Then the dessert fork. Then the emergency backup fork in case all other forks fail."
Evan stared at the array. "What if I just use one fork for everything? One fork, one spoon, one knife. Minimalist approach."
Madame Genevieve looked as if he'd suggested eating the tablecloth and then using it as a napkin. "That," she said, "is how wars start. The Fork Schism of 342 is still taught in diplomatic academies."
"...That's a joke, right?"
"The history books are very clear on the matter. Three noble houses, two hundred years of conflict, all because someone used a dessert fork for their salad at a state dinner."
They moved on to glasses. Water glass. White wine glass. Red wine glass. Champagne flute. Sherry glass. Port glass. "In case of sudden sherry emergency" glass. A tiny crystal vessel that Evan couldn't identify.
"And this?" He pointed to a tiny crystal bowl filled with water and what looked like flower petals floating on top.
"That," Madame Genevieve said, "is for cleaning your fingers between courses."
"Do I dunk them or...?"
"You dip the tips. Gently. As if testing the temperature of a bath for a particularly fragile baby made of glass. Any splashing will be noted. Any splashing will be remembered."
Evan was beginning to understand why his ancestors had apparently died young. Probably from fork-related stress. Or from the sheer exhaustion of remembering which glass was for which beverage.
The lesson concluded with walking. Not normal walking—court walking. A specific glide that suggested you were moving without actually using your legs, like a ghost haunting a very fancy corridor.
"Think of yourself as a swan," Madame Genevieve instructed. "Graceful. Serene. Completely unaware of the furious paddling happening beneath the surface. The legs can be doing absolute chaos, but the upper body must remain placid."
Evan attempted to glide. He managed something closer to "duck with leg cramp who's just seen something alarming."
"Again."
He tried again. This time he looked like a duck with leg cramp who was trying to hide it.
"Again."
By the fifteenth attempt, he had achieved something that might charitably be called "passable" by someone who had never seen a swan and had very low standards.
"Again."
After three hours, Madame Genevieve finally declared the lesson complete. Or, more accurately, declared that further instruction would be "an exercise in futility bordering on performance art, and I have other students who actually have potential."
"You have the basics," she said, packing her fan and various teaching aids into a bag that seemed much too small to hold them all. "Try not to offend anyone important. Or unimportant, for that matter. Offense has a way of spreading. Like mold. Or particularly aggressive gossip."
"I'll do my best," Evan said.
"Your best is... concerning. But it will have to suffice." She bowed—a perfect, mathematically precise 15-degree bow—and left without another word.
Evan collapsed into a chair, which promptly developed a new creak but held. Progress.
From the doorway, Emma appeared, grinning. "I watched the last bit from the hall. Your swan impression looks more like a goose who's seen things. Terrible things. War crimes. The goose has knowledge."
"Geese see things?"
"Geese. And yes. Terrible things. It's in their eyes. The blank stare of existential horror." She sauntered in, picking up one of the many forks from the table. "You know, all of this is nonsense. Complete and utter nonsense."
"I got that impression."
"The queen doesn't care about which fork you use. She cares about whether you're useful. Or dangerous." Emma twirled the fork between her fingers. "Everything else is just... theater. Performance. A way to filter out people who can't handle the game."
"Then why am I learning theater?"
"Because the other actors get upset if you don't know your lines." She set the fork down. It immediately straightened itself, aligning perfectly with its neighbors. "But between you and me? The best way to handle court is to be so weird they don't know what to do with you. Be unpredictable. Be yourself. Be the guy who accidentally turns family heirlooms into chandeliers. They can't scheme against what they can't categorize."
Evan considered this. "That's... actually good advice."
"I have my moments." She grinned. "Now come on. Finch has been hovering in the hallway for the past hour, too afraid to interrupt your lesson but desperate to give you more news. Let's go put him out of his misery."
***