: How to plausibly write a character with a hidden skill TLDR How to keep a character's skillset hidden, when it will be key in the story later on? This must be done without magic and as subtly

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I think you don't have to show her USING the dagger, you can hide the skill in plain sight: She knows about daggers, she knows about dagger-fighting, the terminology, the stances, the holds, the moves. Maybe even let her act some out, with a stick or a carrot or something, to demonstrate what someone did.

She claims that earlier in life, as a kid, she was a superfan of the dagger-fighting blood sport, she watched dozens of contests. Plus you already gave her a great memory.

By analogy: My brother knows everything about football, he can quote stats, knows all the players names, their standing, who's hurt, the names of plays, all that. He doesn't PLAY football, never played football in school, but he knows everything.

If your girl knows everything about dagger fighting, it doesn't mean she's a dagger fighter. But it won't feel like a deus Ex when, in a pinch, she IS a dagger fighter.

Your creative challenge is coming up with those drop-the-mike scenes where she knows things that others do not, perhaps that professionals do not.

One way to do that is to have your crew come upon a ring fight using daggers. Some are disgusted by it, others are not, but she is rapt, and commenting as it progresses. She points out mistakes, good moves, when a fighter is in trouble. "His only chance is a Surriman defense, he has to take the cut," and so on. Her crew turns from watching the fight to watching her watch the fight, after which she has some explaining to do. Which as I said, she attributes to an early period where these were common where she grew up, and she was fascinated by them.

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Sometimes characters surprise you.

And that's okay.

You're absolutely right to worry about a deus ex machina situation where a solution comes out of the blue with no rhyme or reason. This is the sort of thing that annoys readers, and for good reason.

But this is a character whose past is not well known. She didn't grow up in the same culture as the rest of your characters. And knife work is something you'll already establish (even if most people use swords as weapons instead).

You should also establish that she carries a dagger. That's pretty easy because daggers are common tools that people of that tech era (or even our modern one, especially on a journey) would carry for standard tasks like portioning out meat for a shared dinner, skinning/preparing animals to cook, or cutting plants make herbal remedies.

Probably everyone in your story carries a dagger of some sort. Most also carry swords but Jane does not. The characters can comment on it, can even factor that into their assessment of how the group might defend itself if attacked.

You can also establish Jane as someone who doesn't fear conflict and doesn't easily back down when insulted or challenged. Though it would work even if you make her a bit of a pushover, as lots of people step up when it's an emergency.

When Jane suddenly proves she can fight well with a dagger, it will be a welcome surprise, not an eye-rolling one. If you've shown the reader that her personality is one that does what needs to be done (perhaps with killing an animal for food) and you've shown her skill with the knife (deftly skinning said animal), her suddenly fighting and killing a person or attacker is not going to be all that out of the blue.

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I'm going to pose to you that most of your question (especially all of the magic stuff and who your character is) is superfulous and could be summed up as:

Question: How can I have a surprising character feature be used to solve a problem in a story without the reader feeling tricked or fealing like the author is making stuff up? How do I earn that moment?

Answer: Construct an Inverted Mystery

The answer is basically with carefully seeded prep. Looking back at the story, an astute observer should be able to recognize a reverse mystery. Usually a mystery's central result is presented at the beginning of a story and the story works to uncover why the mystery occurred. Here, you're presenting the mystery at the end of the story, but the foundational elements of mystery are not lost.

Motive, Opportunity, and Means

If your main character is going to have a secret ability, that they don't use or discuss, but then suddenly do at a very important moment you must have given enough before hand to imply that this is possible.

Means

It must be established that this sort of thing is possible. If your main character never shows that they can do it, someone else must by reference or direct observation. If this sort of thing has no prior appearance in the story then your reader won't trust that you aren't just making things up. If done well, then a reader might enter the pivotal scene thinking someone in the party/story might have this ability. Red Herring could be used here to imply it could be many people who have this ability.

Opportunity

Basic opportunity is established by your character being there. But, also you must answer "why not before," "why this moment", and establish that it is possible. There are likely many opportunities prior to this that magic could have been used to solve. To make this work, you'll have to have good reasons that magic couldn't or wouldn't have been used in prior settings. These reasons must be apparent to the reader and must also be apparent for why this moment is different. There are ways to handle this. Most of them involve consequences: direct antagonists, the price of using magic, or the social cost of having done so are common elements in fantasy. There is no right answer here, and you'll be wise to pick something that is similar, but different to what people have seen before.

Motive

This is really the crucial element that ties the prior elements all together; you'll notice I couldn't prevent motive from bleeding into the prior section. This situation where the feature is displayed needs to be personal. It must cause your character to overcome something. And after that personal quandry is solved, the only reasonable result is to reveal this. It needs to be the only way to solve the problem. It needs to come with a cost so that we understand that previously this was not desirable or possible. And it all has to logically make sense.

If you are successful, the result is surprising, but inevitable when looking back over the story.

Any more than this would likely get into how to write it, and that's a problem for you to solve. Do note that if this is something you want to do, you're going to have to make room for it in your story. Its good you understand your characters, but you can't let that get in the way of your objectives or prevent you from changing them or the story to make everything work better. I honestly and without malace didn't read the details of your story. Those are for you and I don't need them to answer the question. I advise you to trim them back so this doesn't get closed as "asking what to write."

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