"What do you know about the girl?" Louvart asked.
The question pulled Agnel from his thoughts. He was distracted by the bitter taste of his fennel-and-thyme infusion lingering on his tongue.
"Who?" he muttered, though still unfocused.
Louvart gave him a look. Patient, but not indulgent.
"The young girl that's always with Vellichor? Pale as snow? Doesn't speak a lot?"
Agnel's gaze sharpened slightly. He leaned back in his chair and exhaled through his nose. "Ah. That one."
"Well?"
He frowned. "Daughter. Apprentice. I'm not sure. Something in between, perhaps. But… she doesn't feel entirely real, does she? I've thought—more than once—that she might be something made. A construct, maybe. He's teaching golemancy, after all."
Louvart shook her head. "I don't think so. I've seen her eat. Golems don't eat."
"That's not conclusive. Some modern constructs simulate digestion."
"She also picked up a book yesterday in the observatory," Louvart went on, ignoring him. "Another student had dropped it. She returned it. She smiled. A golem wouldn't do that of their own accord, would they?"
Agnel's brows rose a fraction.
"She seemed… kind," Louvart said. "Awkward, but kind."
"That can't be his daughter," Agnel said, frowning deeper. "Vellichor is- what, centuries old? A thousand? Whatever he is, people that old, even elves, don't have children at that age."
"Why not?"
"I don't know. They just don't."
Louvart gave a shrug. "Magic does strange things to bloodlines. Perhaps he wanted a child. He did fall out of the limelight for a while. Maybe sometime in the last ten years, when no one was watching, he found a nice woman and had a kid. That doesn't sound too out of the ordinary, does it?"
Agnel gave her a sidelong look.
She met it. "And he's not exactly hard on the eyes. There are plenty of people who'd fall for a man like that, even now. Power has a gravity. Charm makes it worse."
Agnel rolled his eyes. "You sound like one of the students."
"The girl carries around something small, the size of a doll. And it walks on its own. A little golem."
Agnel's expression shifted to curiosity. "Animated toy? And you think she made it?"
Louvart said. "I'm sure she did. Even if the runes on it are crude, they're functional. It's the sort of golem a student would make when they've paid attention to every single word of a master's lecture."
He ran a hand through his thinning hair. "That level of control, that kind of articulation of skill-"
"-wouldn't be expected from a third-year, let alone a child."
Agnel exhaled again. "Quite the clever girl, then."