27th of Deepwinter, 413 AH
I'd been awake and already dressed by the time Aldric knocked.
It wasn't the layered, adjusted, collar-checked version of dressed that nearly three months of Aldric's morning routine had trained me to expect. Shirt on, sleeves already pushed past the elbows because that's where sleeves belonged. The collar open.
Three days ago I'd have undone it after Aldric left, as I'd undone it every morning since I woke up in this body, a small private correction that both of us pretended wasn't happening. That negotiation was over.
Aldric came in carrying the morning tray, his eyes going to my throat first in the daily scan that usually preceded the adjustment.
Not today. He had the tact to act like nothing was wrong and carried the tray past me to the table, squaring it to the edge before turning back.
"Good morning, young master."
"Morning."
"Shall I prepare the heavier coat, young master?"
"I'm staying in this morning."
He nodded. His hands, denied the button, found other work, adjusting the curtain tie, moving a cup from one side of the tray to the other, and brushing something invisible from the shoulder of the coat hanging by the wardrobe.
His hands found work the way water finds cracks.
"Will you be wanting lunch in your room, or with the family?"
"Family's fine."
"Very good, young master."
He left.
The notes kept me another hour, and by the time I went down, the breakfast room had mostly emptied. Edmund was the only one left.
He was at the table with the morning letters, reading glasses at the end of his nose, his free hand turning pages with absorbed attention. The light from the window caught the side of his face, and he looked settled. The man who'd rehearsed a speech in the library three days ago was gone, replaced by the version of Edmund I'd known first, warm, slightly scattered, and content with his cup and letters.
Then he looked up.
His eyes did what Aldric's had done, scanning my throat and sleeves.
"Klaus. Good morning. There's bread and honey on the side. Have you eaten?"
"Not yet."
"Good." He gestured at the table. Sera's place had already been cleared, and Rosabel's chair was pushed in, with a smear of honey on the table in front of it. His hand made a small unnecessary adjustment to his own collar, then returned to the letters as if the adjustment hadn't happened.
I sat and ate some bread with honey.
Edmund turned a page, but his eyes weren't moving across the text.
"The grounds are cold today," he said with his eyes on the page. "If you go outside, wear a coat."
"I will."
He nodded, turned the page again, and this time his eyes tracked the words.
I ate two slices and left a third on the plate, then left Edmund to his letters and went back to work.
My room had changed.
The shelf Aldric installed two weeks ago held fourteen sealed containers in two rows, each labeled in my handwriting with specimen name, collection date, and preservation method. Three held tissue samples from the estate garden, stabilized in the fixative I'd tested on the market herb. The fixative was working, and three days in, the tissue still looked stable. If the rate held, I'd have weeks instead of days.
The magnifying lens sat in its brass mount at the desk's center, angled for the winter light. On the wall above the desk, I'd pinned three drawings, the herb's fractal branching pattern, a cross-section of enhanced forearm tissue drawn from sensation rather than observation, and a comparison chart mapping what I felt during enhancement against what the world's formula texts described.
The decorative items that had been on the shelf were gone, moved by Aldric without comment.
I sat on the windowsill instead of the chair. The sill was wide enough because the walls were built thick for northern winters, and while the chair was fine for detail work, the sill was for thinking.
I pulled the notebook to my knees. Specimen 7, pallowort, east bed, collected 24th of Deepwinter. Three drops fixative per container volume. Result at 72 hours: tissue integrity maintained. Vein structure visible under lens. Color preserved. Slight darkening at cut edges, consistent with oxidation. Conclusion: suitable for soft-tissue botanical specimens.
The morning light moved across the desk. Outside the window, a bird called twice and stopped. Somewhere on the grounds below, I could hear the distant rhythm of the guards' morning drill, the muffled crack of something hitting stone.
Comfortable. That was the word for the room with the collar open and the notebooks filling.
I pulled Specimen 4 from the shelf. Pallowort, collected near the perimeter wall. Under the lens, it was the specimen I kept coming back to.
The root structure was different.
The branching was too dense, secondary roots forking at intervals that didn't match the species. I'd checked the garden reference text Pemberton lent me, and root-fork frequency in Specimen 4 was roughly double the described standard, with thicker stems and more numerous root hairs. The whole organism looked like a version of itself that had been given twice the growing season and nutrients.
But the soil was the same, the same bed and watering schedule, as the gardener had confirmed when I'd asked during a walk through the grounds last week.
The only variable was the wall, with Specimen 4 growing within steps of the perimeter where the ward engravings ran along the stone and the wards leaked ambient mana.
Specimen 9 was the same species in the same soil, collected thirty paces from the wall. Under the lens, it looked exactly like the textbook, with normal branching frequency and stem thickness.
Specimen 4 was different, and the difference correlated with proximity to a constant, low-level mana source.
The conclusion was simple.
The moss at the garden wall had given me the hypothesis months ago, Specimen 4 had finally supplied the missing comparison, and this time the difference was measurable. If ambient mana from the wards was producing measurable changes in plant tissue, the implication was that mana affected biological systems below the level of conscious intent. Through proximity alone, cells exposed to higher ambient concentrations grew differently from normal. Plants just grew, and the ones near the wards grew more.
I needed a gradient with three points minimum, the wall, ten paces, and thirty paces, using the same species, soil conditions, and collection method. If root density and branching frequency changed as a function of distance from the mana source, I'd have a dose-response curve.
On Earth, that would be a publishable result in a mid-tier journal. Here, it would mean the cellular model I'd been building since the first enhancement session was a framework of how mana interacted with biological systems at every scale.
I stared at Specimen 4 until the bird outside gave up on whatever argument it was having and left.
Then I started packing.
I laid out four collection containers with sealing lids, the small knife for root cutting, the magnifying lens in its padded case, and a notebook with clean pages and the pencil I'd sharpened that morning, then organized them in the leather satchel I'd been using for excursions.
I put on the heavy coat last, along with gloves from the wardrobe shelf. Edmund had asked about the coat, but it was also Deepwinter, and my rebellion did not extend to frostbite.
I went to the door and opened it as Ren straightened from the wall.
"Outside," I said. "The garden. I need to collect specimens near the wall."
Her eyes went to the open collar, then the satchel. Three days ago, I wouldn’t have thought anything of it.
“Are you going to report that too?”
Her gaze returned to my collar. The little ease she’d had against the wall disappeared. She checked the empty corridor before answering.
“Only if Her Grace needs to know.”
I gave a quiet scoff. “Good to know.”
I started walking.
Yes, I'm being petty. Ren had done her job perfectly, stopping the shopkeeper and reporting what happened. I only wished that being my guard meant she answered to me before she answered to Mother.
I took the stairs with one hand pressed flat against the satchel to keep the tools from moving too much, while the morning light through the tall windows at the landing was the pale gray of early winter.
I pushed the door open and walked into the cold.