Not dramatically — Mireth was small, and news traveled at the speed of gossip, which was roughly the speed of light. Within two weeks, everyone knew that Saint Aldric had developed a new treatment for chronic joint pain. Within three weeks, patients were coming from neighboring villages.
Father was careful about it. He didn't claim credit for a breakthrough — he framed it as a refinement of existing techniques, a combination of herbal wisdom and holy healing that he'd been considering for some time. Greta was equally modest, calling it "common sense that took an uncommon man to implement."
Nobody mentioned the seven-year-old who'd suggested it.
That was fine. Better than fine — it was exactly what I wanted. The treatment helped people. Father's reputation grew. The parish benefited. And Lucien Ashveil remained what he appeared to be: a bright, quiet child who liked reading books and sitting in gardens.
The garden became my sanctuary.
Not just physically though it was a peaceful place, fragrant with herbs and humming with
ward energy but mentally. It was where I did my best thinking, my secret notebook open on my knees, the moonpetals glowing softly as evening settled over Mireth.
I was there on the afternoon everything shifted. Not dramatically. Not dangerously. Just... shifted.
I was sketching a revised ward diagram — purely theoretical, I'd learned my lesson about practical experiments — when I heard footsteps on the garden path. Light. Hesitant. Not family.
I closed the notebook and slipped it under my shirt in one practiced motion.
A girl was standing at the garden gate.
She was about my age — maybe eight. Dark hair, almost black, cut short in a practical bob. Pale skin. Eyes that were an unusual shade of grey-green, like sea glass. She wore a simple dress, clean but not fine, and she was holding a ceramic pot with both hands.
She was also staring at me like I was a puzzle she couldn't solve.
"Can I help you?" I asked.
"Are you Lucien? The Saint's son?"
"Yes."
"My grandmother sent me. She said to bring this." She lifted the pot. "It's emberthorn seedlings. She said your father asked for a supply and she's growing some for him, but these are extras and your garden has good soil."
Grandmother. Emberthorn.
"Your grandmother is Greta?"
"Mm." She nodded, still studying me with those grey-green eyes. There was something unnervingly focused about her gaze. Most children looked at the world with broad curiosity — everything interesting, nothing examined too closely. This girl looked at things the way I did.
Specifically.
"Thank you," I said, standing and walking to the gate. "I'll plant them near the silverroot. They should complement each other."
"Grandmother said you'd say that." She handed me the pot. Her fingers were dirt-stained — not flour-stained like Elara's, but earth-dark, the stains of someone who worked with plants. "She also said you're strange."
"People keep telling me that."
"She means it as a compliment. She says most people look at plants and see ingredients. You look at plants and see..." She paused, searching for the word. "Systems."
That was... an uncomfortably accurate observation from someone's grandmother who'd spoken to me exactly once.
"What's your name?" I asked.
"Rosalie. Rosalie Thorne."
"Do you help your grandmother with her herbs, Rosalie?"
"I do everything with her herbs. Planting, harvesting, drying, preparing. She says I have good hands." She held them up — small, dirt-stained, steady. "She says hands matter more than magic for herbalism."
"She's probably right."
Rosalie tilted her head. That focused stare again. "You really are strange. You talk like a grown-up but you're... not."
"I'm precocious."
"What does that mean?"
"It means I read too much and talk too much and people find it unsettling."
The ghost of a smile. Just a flicker, there and gone. She wasn't an Elara — no bright grins and flying bread rolls. Rosalie Thorne smiled like it cost her something and she was budgeting carefully.
"Can I see your garden?" she asked.
I hesitated. The garden was my space. My thinking place. My notebook was currently stuffed under my shirt, pressed against my stomach, full of secrets written in a language that didn't exist in this world.
But she'd brought me emberthorn. And she looked at plants the way I looked at ward patterns — with the focused intensity of someone who genuinely wanted to understand.
"Sure," I said.
I showed her the herb beds. Mother's silverroot and wintermint. The moonpetals along the back wall. The medicinal garden that had expanded since Father started his new treatment protocol.
Rosalie moved through the garden the way Celestine moved through sword forms — with an ease that came from deep familiarity. She touched leaves gently, examined root systems, noted the soil quality.
"Your moonpetals are stressed," she said.
"What?"
"Look at the leaf edges. See the slight curling? They're getting too much ambient mana from the ward stone. Moonpetals are sensitive — they absorb mana through their roots, and if the soil concentration is too high, they curl to reduce surface area."
I looked. She was right. The leaves nearest the ward stone were slightly curled compared to those farther away. I'd noticed the curling but attributed it to the cold weather.
"How do you fix it?" I asked, genuinely curious.
"Move them farther from the ward stone. Or add a layer of iron-ite gravel around the base — it acts as a mana buffer. Grandmother uses it in her garden."
Iron-ite. A mineral I'd read about — high iron content, naturally resistant to mana conductance. A mana insulator, essentially.
Used as gravel around plant bases. So simple. So elegant. The kind of practical knowledge that didn't come from textbooks but from generations of hands-in-dirt experience.
"That's brilliant," I said.
Rosalie blinked. The ghost-smile returned, slightly less ghostly this time. "It's just gardening."
"Gardening IS brilliant. You're manipulating biological systems, soil chemistry, and ambient magical fields simultaneously. Most people don't think about it that way."
"You think about everything that way, don't you?"
"...Yeah. Kind of."
She knelt beside the moonpetals and gently uncurled a leaf with her fingertip. The plant seemed to lean into her touch — probably my imagination, but maybe not. This world had magic. Maybe plants responded to people who understood them.
"I'll bring iron-ite gravel next time," she said. "If you want."
"Next time?"
"Grandmother will need more emberthorn delivered as it grows. And your garden could use help." She glanced at me. "No offense."
"Some taken, but I'll survive."
"I'll come on Thirddays. After my morning work."
She said it matter-of-factly, the way you'd announce a schedule change rather than propose a friendship. I suspected that Rosalie, like me, wasn't great at the social mechanics of connection. She just... decided things and did them.
"Okay," I said.
She nodded, stood, brushed dirt from her knees, and walked to the gate. At the threshold, she turned back.
"Lucien?"
"Yeah?"
"The ward stone. The resonance pattern is slightly off. Did you know?"
My blood froze for the second time in a month. First Greaves, now an eight-year-old herbalist's granddaughter.
"What do you mean?" I asked, very carefully.
"The mana frequency is point-three above standard hexagonal baseline. I can feel it through the soil — the plants respond to it. It's not bad, just... different. Like someone tuned it slightly and then tuned it back, but not all the way."
She could FEEL the residual modification through the SOIL. Through the PLANTS. Because she was so attuned to the garden's mana ecosystem that she detected a variance I thought I'd erased.
"I hadn't noticed," I lied.
She shrugged. "It's not a problem. Just unusual. Like you."
And she left.
I stood in the garden for a long time after she was gone, the emberthorn pot warm in my hands, the notebook pressing against my stomach, and a thought forming in my mind:
I wasn't the only person in Mireth who paid attention.
That evening, I added a new section to my notebook.
Not ward diagrams or healing theories. A list.
People who see too much:
Edric — knows everything. Trustworthy.
Mother — suspects something. Hasn't pushed. Yet.
Inspector Greaves — gone, but noted the ward anomaly. Low risk unless he returns.
Rosalie Thorne — detected ward modification through plant behavior. Doesn't know what it means. Yet.
The "yet" was doing a lot of work in this list.
Below it, I added:
Note to self: Being invisible is harder than it looks when you keep leaving fingerprints on everything you touch. Be more careful. Be more patient. You have time.
Additional note: Iron-ite gravel as mana insulator. Applicable to ward design? Could a layer of iron-ite between anchor stone and soil reduce bleed-through and improve efficiency without modifying the carved geometry at all?
Additional additional note: Rosalie has really interesting eyes.
I crossed out the last line.
Then wrote it again.
Then crossed it out again.
Then closed the notebook.