Chapter 4: Mira and the Geometry of Invisibility

Mira arrived at the seventh hour carrying a basin of warm water, a clean linen cloth, and the particular quality of silence that belongs to people who have learned to occupy space without disturbing it.

Elizabeth had been awake for an hour already, sitting at the narrow writing table with the three inheritance law volumes stacked beside her and her mind still running its quiet channels from the previous morning's conversation. She heard the door — she had been listening for the door, as she now listened for all doors — and turned to find a girl of perhaps seventeen standing inside the threshold with the basin held level and her eyes directed at the floor in the specific manner of someone who has been instructed to be present without being intrusive. A manner practiced long enough that it required no effort. A manner, Elizabeth noted, that was essentially a form of armor.

The girl was small, brown-haired, with the kind of fine-boned competence that the well-fed and well-rested rarely develop because they have no cause to. Her hands on the basin were steady. Her posture was that of someone who had learned to take up as little room as possible and had discovered that this, too, was a skill.