The food is lavish at home, too.
Our cook seems to regard a girl who will eat anything, and plenty of it, as a sort of test subject: ambitious new creations, traditional dishes from far-flung regions—never a dull meal.
Now and then something ferociously spicy arrives and catches me off guard, but even that makes a fond memory.
Even so, my breakfast is an ordinary breakfast. Noble society is busier than you might think.
There is no time to mount a lavish full course in the morning; with the household staff's meals to prepare as well, everything must be done within a few hours, or the house grinds to a halt.
"Thank you for the meal."
My latest breakfast obsession is barley porridge.
Do not sneer at it as peasant fare.
Few travelers carry bread on the road; far more carry barley and boil it into porridge.
In the southern regions, I hear, corn porridge is the custom.
The standard recipe in this country: toss in whatever edible greens grow nearby, then a strip of dried meat and a slice of cheese from your pack.
Some carry seasonings with them—green onion, wild ginger, peppery herbs.
The slightly better-off add radish, carrot, taro.
There are many kinds of edible wild greens, and this morning's porridge used weeds picked from our own garden.
Scoff if you like—but trace any vegetable back far enough and it was a weed once. There is no high and low birth among plants.
If it tastes good, I am happy. That is all.
Mind you, among dishes celebrated as delicacies there are some genuine horrors, and there exists a breed of gentleman whose hobby is serving them to young ladies just to savor their disgust. I have been invited to such a table myself.
Naturally, I offered fair warning: "There is no good or bad in food. But delicious or foul—that touches upon a person's dignity, so do be very careful."
I do not shriek and make a scene. But poor taste is poor taste.
My daytimes I spend at the Falest Church, where they kindly host me, and where I run a healing clinic.
For those who can wield the holy element, healing is the natural calling.
There are spells like Water Heal, so holy is hardly the only road to healing—but it is the specialist's element, no question.
"There we go—pain, pain, fly away!"
"Whoa—it's healed!"
For small children, this is precisely the right touch.
Behind the theatrics, of course, a proper Heal is at work.
Suggestion, too, is its own kind of medicine for the heart—or so I believe.
The capital, needless to say, never runs short of the sick and the injured.
A great many of them find their way to me—and lately, so do some ugly rumors.
"Say, miss—you know the Marquis Dabundorde's daughter? Lady Luminaria, the Maiden of Light?"
That rumor again, I think—but the patient is in earnest.
"Folks say there ain't enough bad cases to go 'round, so she's taken to experimentin' on people. Scares me half to death, it does."
"Now really, you mustn't let a wound sit until it gets this bad."
"But they say once you set foot in there, she carves you up first and heals you after!"
"Is that so..."
What on earth are you doing, Lady Luminaria?
"And it's only us poor folk, see. Can't pay the fee? Then pay with your body, they say."
"I see. Well—as for me, I am content so long as I can eat my fill, so you are quite safe here."
"Much obliged, milady."
A grown man, moved to tears. He must have been truly frightened.
House Dabundorde has furnished the shrine maidens of the Temple of Light for generations, and their god's light element has long contended with our holy.
A healthy rivalry would have been well and good. But we are a ducal house of royal blood, and they a marquisate forever one step below; and what might have been rivalry has curdled, in practice, into enmity.
Even a one-sided grudge casts a very long shadow.
And into all this walks me: the girl everyone once laughed off as the "Lady of Gluttony," now being called the "Saint of Gluttony."
Strictly speaking, my magic is the royal all-purpose sort—I am really the "gluttonous mage lady." I simply favor the holy element because it heals best.
To them, I must be an enormous thorn in the eye.
And I am such a small thorn, too.
The pressure now reaches Lady Mira as well, whom people have lately taken to calling the "Saint of Four Elements."
House Dabundorde's grand strategy, apparently: marry Luminaria to either prince—whichever will take her—and graft themselves onto the royal family.
Except that both princes live in dread of ending up on Lady Luminaria's operating table. The plan was over before it began.
And the worse it goes, the more sparks come showering down on Lady Mira and me. Such is the current state of affairs.
The nerve of it: to make open enemies of the King's own daughter and of me, his kin, and still speak blithely of marrying a prince.
I would love to take that head of hers apart and see how it works in there. Unlike a certain mad scientist, I am of course joking—but if Lady Luminaria ever thought the same of me, she would actually do it. (Shudder.)