Basic Thaumaturgy for the Emotionally Incompetent

One pie was never enough.

There was a reason why Fabrisse had to sneak into sculleries during the late afternoon when the cooks had all gone to the mess hall, the washing maids were on break, and the kitchen doors hung open and no one was watching. The hearth still glowed with dying heat, the scent of sugar and spice lingering like evidence of a crime already committed. It was the only time the place felt unguarded.

The hearing was tomorrow, and that would be tomorrow’s business.

Thinking about it now only made his heart skitter in his throat. He could feel his mind starting to overheat, running the same contingencies in loops he’d already solved. He’d memorized every regulation clause, every likely question, every answer drilled into place until it was mechanical. More study wouldn’t fix anything; it would just make the noise in his head louder.

A fresh slice of pie, on the other hand, was a tangible solution. Sugar steadied his nerves better than mantras ever did. Technically, sneaking down here was not procrastination; it was a stabilization measure.

He moved quietly, shoes off, activating his trio of Stealthy Trinity: Liminal Presence Drift (Rank III), Auditory Dissipation Field (Rank II), Aetheric Veil: Echofold (Rank II). Rows of cooling pastries lined the counter, and there—nestled among the lesser tarts and puddings—sat the prized mingleberry pie. The one that wasn’t sold anywhere in the Synod except during feast days. Glossy crust, sugared edge, and perfectly intact, it was the treat for kings.

He swallowed. Just one piece.

Fabrisse inched forward, hand hovering. Almost there. One more inch . . . Just one more—

“Don’t you go anywhere, dearie,” a woman’s voice rang out behind him.

His heart nearly jumped out of his chest.

He spun around, hand still frozen. Staring straight at him at a position that rendered all his skills useless was Marla, the scullery maid, with arms folded, flour on her cheek and a knowing smile that said she’d caught him doing this more than once.

“Marla! I—I thought you were on break!” he blurted, as though the declaration might somehow undo the situation. Too ashamed, he cast Veil of Shame on himself. It didn’t make him disappear from Marla’s sight.

She chuckled, stepping closer to rescue the endangered pie. “You know, Kestovar,” she said, “if you’d just asked, I’d have given you one for free.”

He blinked, utterly disarmed. “Really?”

Marla shrugged. “Well, maybe not this one. But something that wouldn’t have gotten you hanged by the head cook, yes.”

Fabrisse hadn’t meant to befriend a scullery maid. It had just . . . happened gradually, like the smell of baking that clung to the courtyard air.

Back in his first year, when his stipend barely covered rent and mandatory reagents, he used to linger by the bakery wing after lectures. The scent of melted butter and caramelized crust alone had been enough to make him stop every time he passed. He never went inside; the place wasn’t meant for apprentices who could barely afford chalk, much less a slice of Mingleberry pie.

Marla had noticed him early on. At first, she thought he was casing the kitchen like some half-starved academy rat looking for scraps. But he had not stolen anything (yet). He just stood by the window ledge, nose tilted toward the ovens, watching pies come and go like a miser watching coins.

One evening, after the supper rush, she stepped outside and found him still there, sitting on the back steps, scribbling notes in a small ledger.

“What’re you writing, boy?” she’d asked, half amused.

He’d startled, nearly dropping the book. “Calculations,” he said. “For the ratios of fruit density to crust integrity. Yours have the highest cohesion I’ve seen.”

That was how it started. By the end of the term, she knew his schedule better than he did, and he’d learned that scullery maids had more power than most magi when it came to dessert distribution.

Which led them to the present.

“. . . I’ll just,” Fabrisse said, “get out of the scullery very quietly now and pretend nothing ever happened.”

He took one backward step, then hesitated, glancing toward the pie with an expression of pure, hopeless yearning. “And maybe,” he added under his breath, “I can get a free slice of pie?”

Marla arched an eyebrow. “Reward for delinquency? No way,” she said, in that firm, singsong way older women used when they’d already decided the world’s sense of fairness didn’t apply to you. “You get rewards for hard work, not for creeping about my counters like a shadow in socks.”

Fabrisse wilted, offering the world’s most sheepish nod. “Right. Yes. Of course.”

“Speaking of which,” Marla went on, brushing her hands on her apron, “there’s a reason I come here at this hour, Kestovar.”

That made him pause. She did seem rather preoccupied. He stayed still, listening.

“I can’t seem to find Laika anywhere.”

“Laika?” he echoed softly. “The kitty that chased that philter hawk off the roof last spring, right?”

Marla gave him a look caught somewhere between pride and exasperation. “Kitty, he says. Hardly. That beast’s no proper cat, but she’s mischievous all the same.”

“Right. She’s a cat-thing. Adjacent feline.”

Marla snorted. “Cat-thing, aye. That’s the proper term for her lot.”

In the Synod, cat-thing was an unofficial classification used by both naturalists and people who simply didn’t want to argue with naturalists. It covered everything in the broad, troublesome spectrum of creatures that looked, behaved, or felt vaguely feline—but weren’t, taxonomically speaking, actual cats.

Some had too many tails. Others, like Laika, had none. Some purred through their bones instead of their throats, producing a sound like a resonant hum through stone. There were aetherically-charged cat-things that could phase through solid walls, others that dissolved into mist when startled, and a few that were technically invertebrates but pretended otherwise for social convenience.

Laika, according to Marla, fit squarely into that unhelpful category—an adjacent feline, as Fabrisse put it. Four-legged, whiskered, occasionally luminous, with the temperament of a spoiled deity and the instincts of a thief. But she was aetherically-charged, so she could be found using a detector.

Marla sighed, glancing toward the clockwork bell on the wall. “My shift’s back on in fifteen minutes,” she muttered. “And if I don’t find that little menace before then, she’ll wander off again and miss her dinner. Last time she did that, she raided the cream cellar and the head cook blamed me.”

Fabrisse straightened a little, interest piqued. “So, if I help you find her—”

Marla was already smirking, seeing exactly where that thought was headed. “Aye. You help me find Laika before she gets herself into another barrel of saffron, and I’ll make sure you’re properly compensated.”

He blinked, cautiously hopeful. “Mingleberry?”

“Merryberry.”

“Acceptable.”

The PRAXIS NODE flashed against his eyes at that exact moment.