No name, no past, no place. Only what she can carry in silence.
It was clear to the young girl from an early age that names were a luxury, a privilege.
They were for children in the village of Linthel's Edge who still had siblings who would yell their names across the fields, boys who had fathers who taught them how to swing hammers, and girls whose mothers braided their hair. All of these children had names. But not her.
She didn't have a mother, father, or anyone to call her name. So she had none—no name, no family, no place.
The villagers paid little to no attention to her; they either mumbled or spoke only when they had to; "That one," "The girl with the crow's eyes," "The shadow child," or shouting, "Hey, you".
She lived behind the grain barn, where the roof sagged and the rats grew fat and scavenged bread crusts and potato peels from the waste. There, she learned the things that would be more important than a name: stillness, timing, and how to move without being noticed.
Her body was slender, almost all bone, with sharp elbows and even sharper knees. Her complexion was as pale as winter and was constantly covered in mud, soot and sometimes worse. But her eye, they were something else entirely, as unblinking as river stone, gray. Everything was visible to her.
She spent her days watching, observing.
She watched as the baker's wife slipped sugar into her apron from the merchant's box, she witnessed the smith's son kissing the cooper's daughter under the shed and stealing nails from his father's forge, she learned where the miller's wife hid the slightly spoiled pears, and she knew the rhythm of the baker's hands as he kneaded bread when he would turn his back, and when he would sing.
She learned things, quiet things, dangerous things.
The villagers didn't see her, but she saw everything.
She could tell who was hungry by their trembling hands, who was hiding something by how often they glanced at the ground, and who was lying by the way they swallowed, and could count the number of coins in a merchant's purse just by how it swung at his hip.
She was not clever like the schoolteacher's son, who quoted from books and smirked at girls, nor was she strong like the tanner's son, whose hands could crack bone, or beautiful like the baker's daugther, but she knew how to read people, their body language, their emotion,their fear, and that was more valuable than being smart, strong or beautiful.
And she watched the roads. Always.
The roads brought coin, and coin meant dropped fruit, forgotten cloth bundles, careless boots that lost knives. Sometimes she'd follow the carts at a distance, sharp eyes on the wheels, on the guards, on the overlooked.
It was a habit. And she knew that habits can save her life when nothing else did.
That is how she survived.
So when villagers gathered in a half-circle at the well in that hot afternoon mud-cloaked, hungry-eyed and muttering like flies, she didn't join. Instead she remained seated behind the haystack, where the scent obscured her and the old decaying planks provided a sliver-thin view of the road.
"Outsiders" someone yelled.
Their crest was simple, a blue tree with roots curved like waves.
"Blue…" she thought " what a weird color for a tree!"
But something wasn't right.
Unlike traders or tax collectors, the crest was on everything, the carriage, the flag, and the guards' armor. The horses were too good, and the guards were too stiff to belong to them. There were three carriages. The second one was gleaming with gold hinges and curtains drawn tightly.
She counted the troops' steps and how they stood. They were not protecting the carts, they were guarding whatever—or whoever—was inside.
Someone important.
"Ah….. a noble," she realized, her fingers tightening around the edges of the wood.
A man emerged from the second one, moving with the kind of ease that suggested he hadn't hurried in years. Age clung to him not in wrinkles, but in the silver embroidery that lined his cuffs and the practiced stillness in his face. His mouth was set in a pleasant line, too polished for frowns, too used to giving orders with a smile. He didn't spare the villagers a glance. His gaze swept over the muddy road, cool and dismissive, as if the very earth beneath him had committed an insult. He stepped down the carriage to speak to the village chief, and behind him trailed a servant, then another, and then through the window
A flutter of silk.
A pale gloved hand pushing the curtain aside.
She saw the face for only a moment, young, beautifull, close to her age, a girl, a young lady.
Not like her. Not at all like her.
Her gold eyes were like the sun, her skin was like milk, and her hair was light blue tied down with real pearls, braided in a way that no peasant would dare to imitate, she wore a lovely blue and silver dress. She looked like him, a lot like him.
"hmm… must be his daughter !"
She wrinkled her nose at the crowd, then she whispered something too faint to hear, but it made the servant beside her giggle, and let the curtain fall shut.
She had never seen someone like that—never seen a child treated like a prize
The village chief hurried to direct them toward the magistrate's hall. Though the noble's carriages did not linger, their presence weighed on the village like an unspoken command.
The nameless girl still crouched behind hay and shadow watched it roll past the well, past the smithy, and past the only remaining statue in Linthel's Edge: a crumbling goddess with ivy creeping over her face. The villagers parted to let the wheels pass, their eyes lowered and their backs already bent in a reverence they did not mean. Bending was safer than watching.
But the girl watched. She always watched.
The carriage that had that noble and his daughter moved slower than the others, weighed down by gold and arrogance, as if it had nothing to prove and no one to fear. Silk curtains stirred in the wind, just enough to offer a glimpse of silver embroidery. Through that narrow slit, she saw her again, that child wrapped in fine thread and cold disdain.
For a moment, their eyes met. Not long. Not enough for the young lady to register anything more than motion, but the nameless girl took in every detail, how she didn't carry her own weight and how her gaze skimmed instead of settled.
Then the curtain fell, and the world resumed its grayness.
The girl moved only as the road dust settled. She didn't instantly follow; she knew better. But by twilight, after the carriages had halted outside the town square and servants had scattered like ants, she had slipped along the back paths between half-fallen homes and dry troughs, weaving through the husk of her hamlet until she was close enough to see but far enough to disappear if necessary.
The noble family had occupied the former magistrate's hall. It had once been grand, according to the elders, but now the stone was broken and ivy-covered, and the roof sagged in the middle like a beggar's spine. Still, it had walls and a working gate, which was sufficient for a noble unaccustomed to suffering.
She crouched in the half-light behind an overturned barrel, watching the activity; servants unloaded containers, two guards spoke at each other with clipped, city-born accents, one of them lashed out at a villager who dared to beg too close—a boot to the ribs sent the man sprawling, another tossed bread crusts to a dog with more meat on its bones than the majority of the children here.
Then she appeared.
She stepped out with the grace of someone who expected the ground to rise to meet her feet. As she turned to speak with a servant, something slipped from her wrist: a white handkerchief.
It fell into the dirt.
Nobody took notice of it.
No one but the girl in the shadows.
She waited, heartbeat slow, till the noble girl was called inside and the final servant trailed after. Then she crept forwards.
She carefully picked it up, it felt softer than anything she had ever touched, the corner had the same crest.
She should've just taken it, or better yet, left it.
Instead, she walked forwards.
The magistrate's gate was half-open. One guard, preoccupied with a wineskin, barely glanced at her.
She slipped in like smoke.
There was a stone path through a weed-infested garden, and beyond it was a broad stairwell where the noble's daughter stood, lit by torchlight. Her servant stood beside her, fanning away flies with a folded cloth.
The nameless girl came to a stop at the lowest step.
She raised her handkerchief.
The noble's daughter stared, shocked to see someone so close yet not kneeling or bowing. Her gaze went downward, lingering on the dirty feet, the torn rags, and her tangled, uneven hair. Her lips curved slightly.
"You dropped this," the girl explained.
Her voice was quiet. Flat. Not deferential, not imploring.
The young lady didn't reach for the handkerchief. She tilted her head.
"It's always the lowborn who forget their place first," she said while looking down at her. "And the last to be forgiven for it."
The servant snorted.
The girl's hand remained outstretched. She didn't look away.
The noble girl stepped down one step, then another, till she reached her.
She took the handkerchief with only her thumb and forefinger, holding it like a dead rat.
"Burn it," she said to the servant, and then hurled it back, as if she couldn't handle the weight any longer. It struck the girl's chest and landed in the dust.
"Filth doesn't belong near silk," she said.
They turned their backs and walked away.
The gate behind her creaked. A guard had finally noticed.
The girl didn't move. Not at first. Not until they were both out of view.
Then she leaned and took up the handkerchief again. The embroidery had become dirty, soiled with road and pride.
In that moment, as she watched her disappear into the darkness, a cold sensation crept through her chest.
Not envy.
Not anger.
Something deeper. Something that nestled in her bones, a seed.
She didn't know what it was at the time, only that it would grow. A hunger, quiet but unrelenting, that would one day guide her steps where others feared to tread.