Chrysalis

There was a chrysalis on one of the poles of Emil's stall. Lalli could tell it could emerge at any moment, and he didn't have anything better to do but watch it while crouching on the stall's counter after having renewed one of the protection spells that had been cast on it; Emil had taken advantage of the fact that he could watch the stall to give a "quick look" at other stalls that usually opened and closed at times that kept him from visiting them. While transfixed by the chrysalis, he vaguely sensed that someone was approaching the stall:
-Stig isn't here right now, but I can sell you tea if you know what you want and don't try to haggle.
-Uh… I work at the stall right next to this one, actually. I just had some things to put on the counter first.
If Lalli remembered what the others had said correctly, the two stalls on either side of Emil's were trying to recruit people into religious orders. Neither tended to give out more than a handful of leaflets a day according to him, so Lalli got curious as to what else either of them would need to bring. He gave the Daughters of Magda stall a brief glance to see the orange-haired girl from Magda day and a box like those used in fruits stalls with a large quantity of cookies inside. Lalli remembered someone mentioning they sometimes sold some to raise money. Too bad they would be using that money to tell people that Emil, himself and a few other people he didn't find too annoying had some sort of disease that needed to be cured. The cookies really looked good. Hulda's sweets had been good as well, but he was never going to eat them again after what she had done, if he ever ran into her again. Emil chose that moment to come back, bearing a couple of large cookies:
-Someone at one of the other stalls told me the Daughters and Sisters were both selling cookies today. I got some on the way back to eat now so we don't get tempted later.
Lalli gladly accepted the cookie, but couldn't help correcting one little fact in Emil's otherwise quite good reasoning:
-You mean so you don't get tempted later. I'm going home as soon as you're back behind your counter.
Emil replied with a tone that usually meant "you just made it okay for hard truths to be stated":
-Hey, who's the one who ate a third of my starting stock on top of his breakfast when I gave pastry selling a try? And knowing you, you're not going anywhere before that butterfly comes out.
The orange-haired teenage girl – Lalli remembered her name was Alicia – spoke:
-What butterfly?
Lalli pointed at the chrysalis before taking a bit out of the cookie:
-Right here. It's going to come out soon.
The butterfly chose that moment to start coming out of its chrysalis, and soon spread its wings as much as it could to help them dry. A voice came from the Sisters' stall:
-Oh, hi there. We haven't seen each other since Magda day, haven't we?
Lalli paid attention to the voice's direction to recognize Emil's cousin Anna, whom he was supposed to pretend was different girl named Annika. He actually hadn't seen either since Magda day, so that was easy. He noticed she had brought a box of cookies, as well.
-Hi… You're Annika, right?
Anna nodded:
-Indeed. I'm afraid I didn't catch your name last time.
-It's Lalli.
Just as Lalli was finishing his sentence, a woman wearing a Daughter of Magda outfit, whom he was quite certain hadn't been among the Magda day group, put an extra box on the Daughter stall's counter:
-Alicia, what are you doing? Nobody is going to buy anything until you're behind the counter.
Lalli quickly realized that the second box's contents weren't cookies, but a bunch of round talismans. His mage sight didn't enable him to do much more than tell if talismans actually did something or not when it came to this country's magic. However, the spell inscribed upon them looked a lot like part of the one on the necklace Emil had been tasked to give to Alicia. While it could merely be a coincidence, Lalli remembered the others discussing the risks that came with giving Alicia one of the necklaces, and someone pointing out that nothing would really keep her from showing it to the mage among the Daughters of Magda. Someone else had commented that it actually might not be a bad thing and result in some of their followers getting talismans that actually worked that they otherwise wouldn't have. The new woman clapped her hands to get attention:
-Many of you have probably already seen the information board this morning. And the claims according to which only half of the population is going to need the protective talismans being distributed because the other half is immune to the disease. That last part is a lie. Many of those who have been told they were immune by a medical mage just so happen to be problematic to the Royals and other well-placed people. Fortunately, I, as the sole mage among the Mora Daughters of Magda, have managed to get my hands on one of their protective talismans. I have used it to make some with only the disease protection spell, and without all the other things the mages working for the Royals and nobility have snuck into them to make their existing followers even more obedient. Please make a line to come and get them.
As people were getting their talismans, Lalli realized something wasn't right. The talisman Alicia had been given was one among a handful to which other spells besides the protection from the monster disease had been added, all destined to people whom the person pretending to be Vivian had a high chance of trying to hurt or take hostage in the near future. The household had otherwise produced only talismans made to protect people from the monster disease and nothing else; talismans took more time to make when there were more spells on them, so a choice had needed to be made between how many people would get a necklace quickly and how many different things each person would get protected from. The talisman that was being distributed out of the Daughter's stall had everything from Alicia's talisman on it, except the complex spell meant to protect from the monster disease. Someone who actually knew that country's magic well had to come here.

xxxx

Just as he was bidding farewell the man selling glass-preserved insects who was walking away with the butterfly in a small cage in one hand and a pot of one of his more expensive teas in the other, Emil realized the Daughters of Magda mage's face was familiar to him; he had missed it so far because her light brown hair a grown a lot since he had last seen her. As he was digging through his memories in hope of putting a name on the woman, he heard it from a voice he didn't expect:
-Katarina?
Helena had told him plenty of times that the market was one of the last places she felt comfortable going; she had never absolutely needed to so far thanks to plenty of members of the household both being at a lower risk of facing hostility and having a good idea of what she liked. Yet there she was, right in front of Emil's counter, in an outfit that was better-looking than the clothes she was usually willing to spare the effort to dress into.
-What are you doing here?
-Lalli said a Scandi mage really needed have a look at the talismans the Daughters were giving away. Knowing him, I guessed there was a decent chance he hadn't told you anything about that before going home.
Emil took a few moments to process the information before answering:
-Sounds like him. But couldn't have Reynir come instead?
-Unless the two of you have suddenly become able to speak to each other, it would have been a dumb idea. About as dumb as showing the Daughters and a bunch of their followers the face of the person who taught Daniel and I to make a certain spell.
-Ah, I see what you mean. So, where do you know that Katarina woman from?
-She was the last person Niels started sponsoring before he died. Going directly from the Southern Region to the Isle would have gotten her laughed at, so she was supposed to spend some time in Mora to catch up first. I didn't expect her to still be in town. Though I'm not entirely surprised by her line of work. People who are naturally good at the magic used in medical examinations but don't get proper training frequently mistake things that are merely seldom-encountered for dysfunctions that need to be fixed. And… she apparently can't even tell which part of the spell is meant to protect people from the new disease. I'm going to need to have a talk with her whenever she has a break. Please keep an eye on what's going on.
Helena then brought a cookie from the Sisters of Magda as to not seemingly leave the market empty-handed. The woman named Katarina was relieved by Alicia's usual supervisor right around the time most people working at the market who weren't selling ready-to-eat food usually had lunch.

As soon as the two of them were sitting face to face at a small table in a noisy eatery and they had ordered their food, Katarina showed Helena the necklace she was wearing under her dress: it had the part of the spell that actually protected from the disease, while the one she wore outside was identical to the one being distributed.
-I'm not entirely sure how it works, but I know the part I omitted from those necklaces is the one doing the actual disease protection. I told Alicia that I couldn't know of all of its effects unless she wore it for a few days, then let me examine her. I'm sure you're wondering whether you should tell people that the talisman that is being handed out doesn't work on the disease or not.
There had been many factors in Helena's silence upon realizing Lalli had been right, one of them being the likeliness of the people lining up to get the talismans actually believing her, especially if they recognized her. Katarina continued as she put her collar back in place:
-Considering your circumstances, I'm guessing you'd rather live in a town without a Daughters of Magda chapter than one with one. If you can spend just a couple days or so playing dumb and telling anyone you feel you have to share that information with to do the same, the local Daughters of Magda will get their comeuppance. My plan already includes making sure Alicia comes out of it alive. She may end up just shaken enough to turn to her orphanage family for comfort, and realize she's been treating her older brothers unfairly all this time. You'd be doing both of them a favor you definitely owe them.
Helena saw a few holes in her reasoning, but also realized than some of the other possible outcomes that were seemingly being ignored could be what Katarina was actually aiming for. In the latter case, it would be best to not spell out the fact she was aware of them. In addition, she had a more relevant question to ask:
-Are you doing this on your own?
-Tobias had other jobs besides being his assistant to offer. And even though he's no longer here, someone who can very obviously afford it is still paying me and telling me to carry it out to the end. Just an extra reason for you to not interfere if something I'm unaware of is still making you consider it.
If there had only been Katarina's new benefactor, whose identity she could easily guess, Helena would have taken her statement to only actually mean that she should be cautious if she decided to interfere. However, Helena now couldn't be sure there weren't other people with missions similar to Katarina's out there. If that was the case, she had only discovered part of a bigger picture, and the effects of interfering with whatever Katarina was cooking up could change tremendously depending on what preparations were going on elsewhere. A quick shift through Tobias' past boasts turned up nothing than seemed immediately relevant. She next focused on the fact that the member of the True Rulers who was playing advocate for the Daughters of Magda should be made aware of this, if only "accidentally". Daniel couldn't be that member for obvious reasons, but someone had to be. As much as many people wanted the Daughters of Magda and similar groups to completely disappear, their apparent disappearance would only really mean that they had gone underground. If a group such as the Daughters of Magda went underground, it just made it easier for the average citizen to act as if it didn't actually exist and were just some legend their potential targets scared each other with. They often forgot that society had forced said potential targets underground in the not-so-distant past, and still did so in not-so-distant places. Anything that happened in public despite this would happen so stealthily that uninitiated bystanders wouldn't notice that anything serious was happening at all. As long as they were kept just above the surface, denial of their existence was harder. While it also made it easier for them to recruit new members or harm their targets, the presence of a stall held by the real deal at the town's largest market let potential targets know what to watch out for instead of making their own, possibly wrong, assumptions on the subject. And should they actually strike in some way, it was easier for people who considered themselves part of neither group to believe it had happened, and possibly realize that their sympathy leaned more towards one group than the other after all. The Daughters however needed some straw to grasp at to stay above the surface, and one of them was to have a few high-placed nobles, including a councilor, at the very least pretend to be supporting what they were doing and defending them against those who were hostile to them. After a quick thought, Kenneth, Rolf and Harald became the only possible advocates. Kenneth's past fling with Randi didn't exclude him, as many people still believed people who were interested in their own sex or neither of the two could be "cured" by a satisfying relationship with someone of the other sex, and they had a strong overlap with those who thought there was no such thing as being interested in more than one sex at a given time. The possibility of it being Rolf was an unfortunate holdover from a time during which a lot of what the Daughters of Magda fought against was genuinely believed to be "unnatural" by most of the population. Something Harald himself had once told Helena summed up the reason it could be him: "if every single trade with the main purpose of parting fools from their money ended, the country's economy would collapse". Selling close-minded people low-effort "solutions" for situations that were only problems in their own minds was as much a market as any other. The money councilor position definitely wasn't made for Emil. Helena suddenly grasped the full implications of the timeframe Katarina had given her, and that notifying all three of the councilors to whom the information might be relevant would probably be faster than trying to figure out which would actually have the most use for it. The first step was to hopefully trick Katarina into thinking she had heeded her warning and had no intention of interfering in whatever she was doing. That, unfortunately, meant helping her keep her cover, for now:
-I see what you mean. Now, can you please explain me why I should hand my daughter over to the Daughters of Magda for her own good?
That conversation was the one that was underway when the waitress brought them their food.

xxxx

To give even more credence to the cover-up conversation with Katarina, Helena had spent some time sipping on a tea sample while sitting against the back pole of Emil's stall and using him as a sounding board about the conversation's topic before heading back home. Now, it was time to put her actual plans in place. The location of Rolf's house meant he was the easiest to warn. Fortunately, Sune had been three quarters into a not-too-thick book he had borrowed from Runa when Helena had come into the dining room. He was now reading through is as fast as he could so he could return it to Runa without making the fact he was retuning it earlier than planned too obvious. The future "forgotten bookmark" with the message for Rolf was already in place. Right now, Helena was trying to get her mind off just how little time ago she could have gotten information to Harald via the black-market King and focus on what she was going to tell the Coordinator during the upcoming night. Next would be an excuse for Daniel to give Kenneth a quick visit.

xxxx

Kenneth let out a sigh of relief:
-Thank you for this. I accepted to be that child's "real" father in part to test the waters concerning them. I noticed at least a couple cared more about the sex of the people involved in a couple than about their marital status, and wanted to see how many there actually were. There turned out to be fewer than I had hoped. A prior warning about a possible attack on them should get me back in a few good graces. Now, you should probably leave before anyone realizes you're here.
Not having found any reason to visit Kenneth that wouldn't have to be a secret anyway, Daniel had settled for a "drop-in, drop-out" visit. Just after taking his "ghostly" leave, Daniel felt something grab his arm, in the exact place Tobias had back when Daniel had only been able to tell that they were someone other than Vivian occupying her body. A familiar voice spoke to him from behind as he realized he was effectively paralyzed:
-All you and your friends had to do was to allow the death of a bunch of people who would do a lot of harm to your household if they could get away with it. You would have been rid of them without having to do anything. You would have been able to console your little sister as she was mourning the death of her colleagues. Maybe she would have realized that there are more important things than whether the comforting hand on her shoulder belongs to a sister or a brother. Too bad, you missed your chance. You won't be getting another one for a while, now.

That evening, Daniel's household and Markus searched the entire town, both physically and magically, instead of watching the orphanage plays. When the search turned up nothing, Helena asked for everyone, except Sune and Janine , to assemble in the dining room. At more or less the same time, she, Markus, Emil, Lalli, Reynir, Sigrun and Mikkel all produced identical cards with identical hand-written instructions, except for Reynir's that were in the Shared Tongue because he didn't speak Scandi. Multiple backups, alongside a guarantee that nobody was showing a falsified card. Daniel had prepared for the prospect of going missing well.

xxxx

The market of the dead's Coordinator spoke before Helena could:
-Please tell me that Daniel is actually safe at home, or at the very least that you, Markus or someone else who can be trusted has gotten hold of him.
-Such a lie wouldn't be worth the price I would charge. By the way, take those. If you launch the search entirely on your own funds, you'll be giving your identity away more than you need to. People who have figured out who I am will be much less surprised at me dumping all my savings that are in token form on this. I have a lead for whoever gets sent out: I just found out today that our common foe may be planning something against the Mora Daughters of Magda very soon, and the person who told me this hinted that it may be part of a bigger plan. Kenneth was apparently the last person to see Daniel. It was a stealth visit and he's quite sure he saw him leave the same way he came.
Helena spent the rest of the market of the dead's opening hours loitering within a reasonable distance of the Coordinator's stand, in case any news came. Some people who knew something would possibly want to avoid giving the information to her directly. It would be easier for those people to avoid her on the way to their preferred information broker if she stayed in a spot near a well-known location for the entire duration of the market. As the time until close became so little that it was too late even for last-minute transactions, Helena had one last question to ask the Coordinator:
-How's your health doing since last time I asked?
-Nothing new. Doing anything that requires physically moving at all will be up to you kids and whoever gets paid to do it in the underground.
Faking one's death only guaranteed that the death was faked. It didn't make one immune to the injuries and health problems that would have been found in an honest-to-gods survivor of the means by which the apparent death had occurred.

xxxx

Emil still had to go to his stall that morning, as there were many reasons to keep more people than necessary from knowing of Daniel's disappearance. People wouldn't just assume Emil was sick if he didn't show up; to make that believable, a member of the household would need to show up to inform the Planner and the keepers of the stalls neighboring his. The lie would then risk snowballing into someone actually visiting the mansion and disrupting a set of ongoing tasks that were all some combination of best kept secret and time-sensitive. Some of those tasks were another reason both Helena and Mikkel had agreed that Emil should be out of the house; having figured out that something could happen while the Royals came to see the last plays all on his own, Markus had already asked to be on the evening guard shift and hence was currently free to use his time as he pleased during his usual work hours. With Markus hanging around the house, not being inside it was the best way for Emil to keep him from realizing that he'd watched those plays from the Royal seats before and was more worried about something happening to the Royals than about Daniel missing. And if Markus wanted to get any sort of inside info about the Royal seats, Helena and Sune were the ones he'd ask anyway.

Unfortunately, Emil's "day started badly and having to be next to the two of you isn't making it any better" excuse for his obvious bad mood apparently managed to fool Alicia a little too well, as she decided to use him for what he had come to call "preaching practice" yet again. He felt like giving the lowest grade ever to the current iteration of her speech, as it a little too blatantly boiled down to "you'd have much fewer bad days because we wouldn't be harassing you anymore and literally any woman would be ten times better than Lalli as a spouse". Just a little more than a year of marriage and three of really knowing Lalli told Emil that the kind of person most people considered "ideal spouses" would have been quite unlikely to work out for him. During a lull in customer flow, Emil found himself focusing on scraping the now-empty chrysalis off his stall's pole to keep himself from blurting out information he had been expressly asked to not share with Alicia just to have her calm down a little; considering the timeline that Katarina woman had given to Helena, anything that could get in the way of Alicia being around Katarina when she needed to be could make the difference between life and death for her. Of all things, the chrysalis-scraping ended up being the thing to make Alicia change the subject:
-The butterfly that came out of there turned out to be kind of ugly, didn't it? Too bad it wasn't a prettier kind.
-The guy selling the glass-preserved butterflies seemed to like it alright.
-Well, good thing he technically got it for free, he's probably going to have a lot of trouble selling it.
Emil was suddenly tempted to go see if the butterfly was ready yet and buy it just to spite her. Unfortunately, he had seen the price of those things, and they were quite expensive. He would be able to afford it only if it actually did get significantly marked down due to not selling for too long. Another thing that could happen crossed his mind, and made for a perfect answer to Alicia:
-What are you talking about? I'm quite sure it will sell as soon as it hits the stall.
-You have that horrible taste in butterflies, yet you insist nothing is wrong with you?
-Why would I be one with a horrible taste in butterflies and not you?
Emil sighed in relief, as being able to organically ask Alicia how sure she was to be the one who was right on a subject that relied on personal taste usually granted him peace at least until the rest of the day. The brand of propaganda the Daughters used wasn't quite fit for topics as irrelevant to society's workings as which butterflies looked the nicest. Two welcome voices piped up from the Sisters' side:
-Were the two of you talking about the butterfly from yesterday? It was gorgeous! Annika said she liked it, too.
-She almost made me wish I was there to see it.
Only Anna's supervisor and the younger volunteer who sometimes came instead of Anna were currently manning the Sisters' stall. Emil could easily guess the reason for which Anna herself was absent.

Daniel only knew he had lost consciousness at some point because he felt like he was slowly regaining it. While he couldn't tell whether his eyes were closed or his surroundings were actually dark, he could hear voices that were clearly human. Senses only mages possessed told him that he definitely wasn't in the physical world. Daniel decided to focus on what he was hearing as much as possible. By sheer coincidence, the first few sentences he was able to properly parse were exactly what he needed to hear to guess the nature of his new location:
-We are going to see the "Markus, Royal Spy" plays performed by Vivian's orphans tonight. Do you remember those? The healer said it may help you a little to watch them.
Daniel had studied Janine as much as he could. Tobias had made it extremely hard to reverse any of their actions without a high risk of destroying Vivian's mind and/or seemingly killing the child. And now, he had sent Daniel straight to an artificial body that he had much fewer qualms about damaging for the sake of figuring out how it worked. He had no idea how much time there was left before the plays started, but the time Janine had taken to wake up, and later be responsive after that initial transfer, made the chances of it being late in the day rather than still early quite high. However, if he was lucky and enough as his guesses turned out to be right, watching a familiar play may very well gain the reputation of a miracle cure.

As soon as Emil came back to the mansion, Sigrun grabbed him and handed him over to Mikkel, who brought him to the kitchen and asked him to make some medicinal tea. This turned out to have been done to allow Mikkel to share news in a fairly quiet place. There apparently hadn't been any sort of progress in actually finding Daniel since Emil had left in the morning. The instructions from the card, meanwhile, had been followed. A few extra people had been put in the loop, partly to help in the efforts, partly so they could prepare for the eventuality of Daniel's well-being being used as leverage against them. The young woman who had portrayed Daniel in the Magda day play had come to the house with the costume's wig in a bag, and was now lying sideways in his bed and wearing his actual sleep clothes, back to the window, which was open to let some air in; as far as the guards currently on the orphanage's roof were concerned, Daniel was simply too ill to leave his bed. Markus, meanwhile, was taking advantage of the fact that he was exceptionally doing an evening shift to keep him company during the day. Having Emil bring up tea soon after he came back from the market was a contribution to the cover.

When Emil brought the tray up, Markus and his acquaintance seemed to still be talking, despite the fact that she had allegedly arrived not that long after he had left. On the other hand, Daniel and Markus had gone to meet with some of the latter's acquaintances after the Magda day plays, so it stood to reason that he had at least one actual friend in the troupe. He came in with a tray:
-Hi. Mikkel told me the two of you could use some tea and snacks.
Markus introduced his friend, all while looking like he was simply showing him a good place to put the tray:
-Julia, this is Stig. He sells his tea at the market for most of the day, so she had to leave before you came. Stig, Julia from the troupe we watched on Magda day. She was given the vacant spot in our orphanage room about a couple years after Daniel first moved here, so we've been keeping in touch.
-If by "keeping in touch", you mean spending time with me almost only when he cancels plans or mysteriously disappears, that sounds about right.
Julia's tone made it hard to tell whether the comment was being lighthearted or not, causing Emil to raise an eyebrow as he put the tray down on the nightstand. Markus explained looking a little embarrassed:
-Well, she's not exactly wrong. Daniel cancelled plans at the last minute quite often while he and Helena were seeing each other, and at the time I was trying not to rely on him alone for relaxing companionship. But I did still kind of ended up spending time with other people only when he couldn't come. And that did include Julia and I not really becoming regular drinking buddies until after Daniel went missing on the Isle.

xxxx

Emil hadn't had the heart to wake Lalli up after all the energy he had spent on the search, especially considering he may or may not need to do it all over again after dinner. Emil had ended up having a nap that he had turned out to really need, instead. By the time he woke up from it, it was definitely time to take Markus and Julia's tray downstairs. As he came close to Daniel's room, its occupants were talking:
-If you have any interest in my opinion, it sounds like to me that you and Daniel should let go of Alicia already. If she can't stand you doing what feels right for you, it's her problem, not yours.
Markus sighed:
-I'd be lying if I told you I never considered it. But each time I've gone anywhere near making a concrete move in that direction, I just… couldn't. And to be honest, it's partly because of what I saw happen with you. You were so heartbroken when your parents gave you that ultimatum to return to your home promptly or never. Doing that to her…
-Pff. Talk about some "school" managed by the Daughters in a town where they're doing a little better than here was the reason I left in the first place. As far as I'm concerned, the reason you'd have to burn bridges with Alicia are much more understandable than the reason my parents had to do the same with me.
-It's not only that. Judging by what your family did during the following days, they very obviously weren't expecting you to choose to not return to your home at the time. If I end up giving her a similar ultimatum, I don't want to be using it as a panic-induced last-ditch attempt to make her change her mind. I want to be doing it while being as close to genuinely ready to hear whatever answer she may give me as I can manage. And for any answer that I won't like to be final. That's the part I know I'm not ready for quite yet.
Emil decided to wait a while before coming to get the tray.

xxxx

Those who could turn into a monster had died looking on the outside how they had come to be on the inside without realizing it. For the rest, it hadn't mattered whether they were able to be sick or not; they had died at the… appendages of those who had transformed before they could understand what was happening. As she was washing the blood off Alicia, Katarina was amazed at how perfectly she had regained a human form. Even the places where skin had broken had become mere rashes, which were fading so fast that they might as well have been dirt being washed away by the damp cloth:
-This is great. According to what I read, the first victims of this disease would completely lose their minds, stay in that form forever, and could only die by starving, getting killed, or have their form become even more twisted, to the point that disease's inherent magic couldn't sustain it. On the way for a cure, someone figured out how to reverse the transformation.
Alicia was conscious, but hadn't said a single word ever since Katarina had taken magical control of her transformed body to kill the other monsters and make sure there weren't any survivors besides the two of them. Katarina tied a talisman around Alicia's neck and spoke to her:
-Now, you must not take this off until I tell you to. There is special music that can make you transform without me being able to stop it, and it will be playing where I'll be taking you next. Keeping the necklace on will keep you from transforming when you hear the music. It will be very important for people to see you not transform down there. It's going to be your alibi.
She dressed Alicia, making sure to not accidentally do anything that would activate the extra protection spells that Daniel had added to the talisman. She briefly considered swapping the pair of talismans between which she had – most certainly clumsily – distributed the spells she had noticed with Alicia's properly constructed one, but part of what she wanted to accomplish was making Alicia realize that the talisman sent to her by Daniel was genuinely protecting her, and didn't have any sort of trap in it. If she came to the conclusion that Daniel had known Katarina would need it and was actually an accomplice to the massacre, it would, in her eyes, no longer be Katarina's fault, at least no longer entirely Katarina's fault. A big part of it would be simply due to the kind of reasoning the Daughters had taught Alicia to have. With Alicia dressed, Katarina checked the hearth to make sure the message from Kenneth she had managed to intercept during the previous evening was completely destroyed and headed for the orphanage.

As she left the building with Alicia's hand in hers, Katarina magically scanned her once again, and sighed in frustration. Once again, she had to remind herself that if Alicia had been a mage, Daniel would have discovered it years ago. Katarina herself had gone through a phase of having the exact right combination of magical inclination and lack of training to mistake the people the Daughters wished to "cure" for having something inherently wrong with them. After having heard of the reasons Alicia had joined the Daughters, Katarina had suspected that she was in a situation similar to her past one. It had turned out to not be the case. Katarina's current prime suspect for Alicia's stance in regards to her brother was a compromise the orphanage had made decades ago as to not be bothered on Magda day: thanks to a bunch of women who had no concept of cases like Markus' naturally existing since birth, he'd mostly had to figure out who he really was "on his own, without any external influence". Katarina knew of it mostly from hearing some Daughters ranting about the arrangement currently being respected to the letter, but outright ignored in spirit. As far as Katarina could tell, the latter consisted mostly of letting older children who had been taken in after being kicked out of prejudiced families interact with younger children. Alicia's own main scapegoat was the yearly plays, where there was little regard for whether the actor's gender and the character's gender matched. In spite of the complaints, the arrangement remained more in favor of the Daughters' worldview than they, themselves, realized; it had been a big factor in Markus having had to be someone he wasn't for long enough that Alicia got deeply attached to that person. Katarina couldn't help but wonder what would have happened if Alicia had been aware she had a second older brother from the start.