Yuna flinches. “Elvira, when my father said no to ‘disposal’ last night, it was not about the word. You are not our tool. You are a part of this family now. You don’t have to be comfortable with it yet, we’ll go at your pace. But we aren’t going to use you, or have you at our disposal. If anything, it’s the opposite.”

She shakes. She drops to her knees and then she drops prostrate and then she doesn't know what to say, doesn't know this kind of test, doesn't know what Yuna wants from her to show her that she knows her place, she's not been tempted out of, she knows -

"Please - we've been taught better, please-"

“No, no please get up, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to upset you!” Yuna sounds distraught. 

Humans being distraught at and apologizing at her is terrifying. Get up is a order. She stands. She shakes. She is nonthreatening she is obedient - "I'm sorry -"

“Don’t be sorry. I’m sorry. This whole thing must be so frightening to you. Being passed from person to person like an object. Like something inhuman,” Yuna says this terribly sadly. “It’s why my father and I try to help. We take in mages to keep them safe. Away from the horrible system of...well. Slavery. It’s slavery, without a doubt.”

...

(She is pretty obviously inhuman, given that she is a mage, and she is pretty obviously not an object, given that no one tortures objects to prevent them from troublemaking. She does not volunteer this commentary.)

She can think of about three possibilities for what is going on.

One, these people are somehow actually - anti-mage-slavery humans, or something like that. (That one's not likely, but, well, she supposes it belongs on the list.)

Two, these people have some odd sex thing for pretending they are anti-mage-slavery. (Humans have very elaborate odd sex things sometimes; it came up on missions a few times. She's not heard of them being about actual mages, but she really doesn't begin to think she'd have heard of everything.)

Three, this is a further test about how she's going to be acting.

At the moment, she is, in fact, unsure how to act. She stands there.

“...are you okay? Would you like to sit down?”

She attempts to think it through, given existing information.

Anti-mage-slavery humans - no idea how they'd want her to act. Polite and peaceful and cooperative, if they've got a 'mages can totally behave themselves without suppression' theory? Grateful, probably?

Odd sex thing - best guess at this point might be 'like Andrew'; that seems like the likeliest indicator of what they like. Not sure if they'd like if she just suddenly switched to it.

Test - well, acting how one is supposed to act, probably. And not getting up to anything.

How is she allowed to act. Law's fairly clear about obedience to owners coming generally first. 'Humans keeping to mage ownership rules' is the Authority of Mages' business, not theirs. She's blackmarket now, but she's had the four days wait. There's extra things she's not not allowed to do still, but they're the 'make certain weapons' sort, not this. (If the Authority of Mages gets her back and she's been doing the sorts of things that might give a mage ideas, they will hurt her very badly. If they get her back and she's been disobeying her owners, it will be considerably worse. Not a fun choice, but not a complicated one.) Obedience is obviously not just to direct orders.

"Thank you," she says, and sits. (If 'would you like' questions were actually to be treated the same as ever, she will presumably learn that shortly. (And painfully. So it goes.) (She braces, not very visibly). If that's not what happens, she can probably conclude that these humans do in fact want something else when they ask them.)

Yuna brightens a little bit, seeing her accept the offer with thanks rather than 'at your use', but is worried that Elvira is just changing the language again. "Is there anything I can do or say to explain anything? Make you feel better?"

It's like she can see the whirls of thoughts in Elvira's head.

Well, she probably isn't guessing exactly at their contents.

Brightening is - probably a good indicator (absence of immediate reprimand or worse, likewise so.) (Unless she's going to respond like everything's fine and then reveal hours or days later that it wasn't and issue punishment all at once. Which - it's not productive to think about that. There's nowhere she can go with it.)

So if it was a test then the desired result was probably 'she noticed Yuna didn't like how she was answering before and acted in accordance' and not 'she kept to the usual dictated phrasing'. And if it was one of the others then this is likely closer to what they actually want than she was before. That's - desirable.

"Might I know more about the rules and directives of this household?" 

"Oh! Um, well, there's no particular rules, per se. It's mostly just making sure everyone's comfortable and fed. You don't have a particular job. We want you to feel safe and like you can practice your magic at will. Andrew can probably help with that."

She wasn't necessarily expecting a true and accurate answer - if it's a test they might feel that would defeat the purpose, and if it's a sex thing they might not want to be - dropping out of character. And if it's the first thing then they may not be wanting to think there is a character. But she was hoping it might give her something. 

(Having heard it, she's certainly hoping it's not true-and-accurate, since the alternative is that it has somehow not occurred to them that 'safe' and 'practice magic at will' are extremely mutually exclusive as long as one lives in a world where the Authority of Mages still exists.) (Given what she's seen of their financial level, she doesn't expect keeping everyone fed presents particularly much of a problem. She doesn't comment on that.)

"Thank you. Might I ask what would - a usual schedule here be like?"

"Usual? Well. I guess for you would be only constricted by meal times. Everything else is what you choose. I...I guess I could give you ideas, if that helps?"

...well, she supposes expecting you to get to completely new things all of a sudden and not caring particularly that this might present some problem (except in as much as was entailed in forcing it) is par for the course for humans. 

"Thank you." She looks attentive.

"Andrew will train or study, and sometimes accompanies the kitchen girls into town when they go shopping. There's a movie room and a game room, a big library, all of which you're welcome to? What would you do for fun, if you could do anything?"

"Might I ask, what he is learning?"

...

She knows how to answer that question in field cover, but she is still not that.

"I'm sorry. For fun?"

“He’s learning medicine. He’s already quite good at healing magic, but he wants to understand the human body. He’s a sponge for knowledge,” Yuna says with a very fond laugh. 

She stills somewhat, biting her lip. “Um, recreation? Things that aren’t work?”

That sounds like he might have learned at least some healing magic here (if he'd been a medical mage she thinks they'd have learned about bodies already. Also he didn't act at all like one.) That's an - interesting thought, a potential opportunity to learn some magic not completely constrained by dictated education and then where she's designated. She's careful not to let it go overly far - she doesn't know anywhere near enough to go off with anything. But.

And, that is much clearer. 

"Thank you. Might I be able to - think on it more?" she says, because she's definitely not telling Yuna what she likes doing on recess aside from what everyone does. And she doesn't think it's currently particularly a good idea for her to actually be thinking what she'd do for recreation if she 'could do anything'. (Ride a motorcycle? Jump of a building with that set of equipment she ran into the concept of once? Shoot someone?)

“You can take as long as you like. This is your home now, if you’d like it to be. You can do whatever you want.”

She obviously enough cannot, even if she's apparently not supposed to drop to her knees at the suggestion, but she won't contribute that either. 

"Thank you. 

Might I know about work I might be doing, or training to do?" (Yuna had said "You don't have a particular job" which sounds like a miscellaneous sort of thing, but it would be useful to have more details than that.)

Yuna nods, smiling brightly. "Follow me, I'll show you the basement." She gets up and heads to a wing of the house Elvira hasn't seen before.

She follows. She successfully barely flinches at 'basement'.  

Andrew has set up the gym-like room with a few targets and is standing at one end of the room, preparing spelled projectiles.

That does not look particularly medical. But she already knows they're using him as a field mage, so neither is it surprising. She watches, unless Yuna seems to be wanting her to do something else.  

Andrew waves Elvira over. "Just some fireball training. For fun!"