Thornwood’s kitchen had escaped the fire, a cavernous expanse of scorched stones, copper pots, a hearth large enough to roast a wild boar, and a vast table that could seat twenty servants, for whom there was, of course, no time to cook (only four promising young sprouts and, of course, Elena herself).
So the kitchen had become Lucien’s plotting ground, Kael’s sharpening area, and Sylas’s exercise room (with kitchenware).
Every morning at dawn, Elena would come downstairs and dispense the day’s Golden Touch applications.
First to Kael, then to Sylas.
Lucien refused to accept any—”My development is intellectual, not biological.
Save your mana for people who need it”—leaving plenty of time for Elena to perform a bit of analysis.
Then she noticed the bread.
It surfaced on the third morning after their arrival in the kitchen: a dark loaf of rye, set on the table where no one could possibly have placed it, along with a dish of fresh butter and a small jar of fruit preserves.
Elena’s dagger was out.
“Who’s there?” No answer was forthcoming, aside from Kael emerging from the shadows, his own weapon drawn but his nose wrinkling suspiciously.
“No threat,” he said.
“Whoever left it is…
small.
Young.
Female.
Smells of flour and fear.” “How do you know that?” “I recognize fear.” A survey of the kitchen failed to turn up any evidence beyond the unlocked back door (Kael always locked it before retiring) and a pile of blankets, straw, and ragged lace tucked behind the flour sacks.
And the doll: a doll with a faceless head.
“Someone is living here,” Lucien announced, sauntering in with his ledger held under his arm.
“A squatter.
From the slums, presumably.
The place has been abandoned for years, everybody knows that.
She probably slipped in during the winter.” “She’s still here,” said Kael, his eyes fixed on the oven.
Elena approached the hearth.
The oven was large, stone-built into the wall, large enough for a person no bigger than a child to crawl inside.
Elena peered into the darkness of its depths.
And in the darkness, a pair of eyes met her gaze.
Large, dark brown eyes belonging to a girl—or rather, a young woman—hunched within the space, arms wrapped about her knees, her face streaked with soot.
She couldn’t have been much older than sixteen, dressed in tatters of cloth, her wheat-colored hair cropped to a short length with what looked like a piece of stone.
“Come on out,” Elena said softly.
The young woman shook her head violently, pressing herself further into the oven.
“I won’t hurt you,” Elena promised.
“This is my home now.
But you can stay, if you like.” The girl didn’t move, her eyes fixed instead on the bread on the table.
“Did you make that?” Elena inquired.
A tiny nod.
“It’s good bread,” said Elena.
“Perfectly shaped, even.
How did you learn to make it?” The girl’s lips parted but no sound emerged, her hand moving to cover her throat, a gesture of negation, of silence.
She shook her head again, and tears welled in her dark eyes.
“Mute, or wounded in some way that took her voice,” Kael surmised.
“Poor thing.” Elena studied her closely.
A squatter, a mute, a waif from the lower city with exquisite bread-making skills, and the ability to curl up within a large oven when pursued.
Another potential asset.
A decorative sprite to cheer the melancholy of the gloomy kitchen.
But the system was already notifying her.
The young woman had abilities, but not of the magical sort.
Elena reached into the oven.
The girl flinched back as she drew close, but Elena held her hand out at the side of the oven, resting it on the cold stone floor next to the girl’s knee.
The girl stared at Elena’s palm, then up into Elena’s eyes.
Slowly, ever so slowly, the young woman extended her hand and touched Elena’s fingers.
[ASSET DETECTED] [NAME: UNKNOWN] [STATUS: SQUATTER / UNWILLING MUTE] [CONDITION: MALNOURISHED, TRAUMA-INDUCED MUTISM, SOCIAL AVOIDANCE] [HIDDEN POTENTIAL: ???] [ANALYSIS INCOMPLETE] Elena scowled.
The system could not read the young woman.
Yet Elena knew for certain there was something extraordinary buried deep within the girl, a vast potential that slumbered beneath layers of fear and silence.
“What is your name?” Elena asked.
The girl placed a finger over her chest, outlining a shape on herself, before pointing to a section of the oven wall, where, with her fingernail, or part of her nail, she had meticulously scratched letters into the stone.
LYRA “Lyra,” said Elena, her voice gentle and firm.
“I’m Elena.
This is my home, and you are safe here.
Understand?” Lyra nodded, then did something completely unexpected.
She pulled a chunk of bread dough from her pocket and began to knead and shape it in her hands, folding it over on itself until it took on the appearance of impossible geometry.
Circles nested within circles, spirals that folded inward upon themselves, shapes that seemed to suggest the existence of things beyond the natural world.
“Runes,” Lucien breathed, a pair of glasses sliding onto the bridge of his nose as he paused his polishing.
“Unconsciously generated magical formations.
That’s not merely decorative…
that’s a fully realized magical diagram.
She’s a mage, and she doesn’t know it!” Elena looked at Lyra’s hands.
The patterns were perfect, geometric and precise, the mathematical constants exact.
Someone knowledgeable in the basics of magic would be able to recognize the lines and trace the principles, but Lyra was more than just drawing diagrams; she was weaving incantations of power into the dough with an intuitive, effortless grace that made the air around it hum with a barely perceptible energy.
“She’s not a squatter,” Elena murmured.
“She’s a mage.
A very, very powerful one, and she has no idea.” Lyra looked up, her fingers falling still in the dough.
She held the lump of bread out to Elena, a silent question in her wide eyes.
Elena took the bread.
“It’s beautiful,” she said.
“Let’s see what you can do with it.” [TICK: Asset #4 identified.
Unconscious magical formations detected.
Mute squatter: LYRA.]