A Katarina Claes Interlude

Katarina had sort of wished more of her friends would be able to stop over and see her cousins, but other than Sophia—who had arrived the next day, a big pile of new books in her arms, and Katarina was finally able to catch up on all the new novels that she'd missed—and Mary, everyone else seemed to be really busy. Sophia had sighed and almost moped about how she only ever got to see Nicol at dinner, and he was usually so tired he had to go to sleep soon afterwards.

"I just really wish this International Assembly thing would finish already!" Sophia sighed. "Then big brother would have more free time and even come here to visit you with me!"

"Ah, so that's it," Keith said blandly. "You just want him to carry with obscenely big pile of books for you."

"Hey!" Sophia protested. "… okay, that too, but that's not the only reason!"

There had been a lot of books out lately, and Katarina sighed at not having any time to read them. Maria had forbidden them to her, on the basis of her not going to sleep and staying up all night reading, which… all right, was fair. It was probably the responsible thing to do. But that didn't mean she had to like it! But she wasn't at Maria's right now, so she could read if she wanted too, and Sophia had brought a whole bunch of recommendations! There was a new Princess Summon Sign novel, a new series called Romance Not Included (which was a lie, the book totally included it!), there was My Time in Treewood which was the sequel to My Time in Ferrari, there was yet another romance set in the Academy about a love triangle centered around the popular Lady Aniratak and beautiful but cold Lady Airam who both fall in love a shy, unassuming, perfectly average young man…

All right, that last story wasn't very good. It was just so… bland and generic and boring, but Sophia seemed to like it a lot for some reason, so Katarina had tried to be enthusiastic about it.

Katarina had thought that Maria would visit at least—Maria and Mother seemed to get along very well, probably because they were both tyrannical tsundere who liked to tell Katarina about etiquette—but the other woman didn't show up all week. Though considering how everyone had acted all weird about Maria's carriage, maybe she just didn't want to put up with it again. What was so weird about a carriage with no driver, anyway?

…

OOOH, right, that wasn't normal! Katarina had forgotten that. Yeah, Maria's carriage was definitely weird, but it seemed to work for her…

Also, Olga had made a new friend! Probably…?

"Everyone called me gloomy and boring for being quiet and not smiling a lot," Olga said almost defiantly.

"Everyone called me creepy and weird for having hair like an old person," Sophia shot back.

"I was called a strange child who didn't belong in the Adeth family!"

"I was called a cursed child and a misfortune!"

"At parties, everyone avoided me and liked to hang around my sisters and cousins instead!"

"Lucky you! At parties, other children would get me alone, surround me and take turns calling me names!"

"People said I was creepy like a shard of Manus!"

"People called me the reincarnation of the paledrake!"

"Are they… making friends with each other?" Katarina said, tilting her head, confused. "I can't tell."

"I… think so?" Marie said, head also tilted in confusion. There was a complicated look on her face that Katarina couldn't interpret.

Everyone jumped as Sophia and Olga suddenly… hugged each other.

"You poor thing!" Olga declared.

"Your life was terrible!" Sophia said.

"Not as bad as yours!"

"No, you had it tougher! I met Lady Katarina when I was eight and she made everything better! You didn't meet her until this year!"

"Well, I had my sisters and all my cousins with me! That was like having… well, three or four Katarinas, because Katarina is a bit much even for this family. But I've known them my whole life! You've only known Katarina for ten years!"

They were… probably friends…?

Still, Katarina, Keith, Sophia and Mary had a lot of fun with Katarina's cousins. Keith and Cousin Watson got along really well, even better than Keith got along with Cousin Mashu! They spent a lot of time sitting in the corner, drinking tea and coffee and just… sitting back, smiling, as if they knew something all the girls didn't. It was kind of weird, but they seemed to be enjoying themselves…? Well, it never lasted long anyway. Someone would notice they were being more mushroomy than Olga the new mushroom and drag them in to join everyone, and they were happy to comply.

Sometimes, when the whole family was together, like after dinner, Keith, Father, Cousin Watson, Aunt Henriette, Aunt Viola, Aunt Eileen and Uncle Salomon would do that. Just… sit together quietly, drinks in hand, and smile like old folks watching kids play. Even Keith. All that was missing was a shogi board. Or… well, Katarina supposed it was a chatrang board here, since Sorcier didn't have shogi (maybe they had it in Ashina? Not that she knew how to play…). Katarina thought was a bit weird, since they were all pretty young.

She'd just gone back to enthusiastically telling mother about all the etiquette lessons she'd been having with Shana-sensei. Mother never seemed to get tired about hearing about those, even if she was always crying by the end. Yes, Mother, it was a lot of hard work and studying!

"See! You could do it after all!" " Mother cried as she hugged Katarina. "Why couldn't you be this diligent when I was teaching you?"

"Because Maria is scary," Katarina explained. "She threatened to take away a little girl's dessert if I didn't study. I couldn't let that happen!"

Mother gave her a look. "She… what?"

"Yes, Maria said that if I didn't pass the tests, a little girl wouldn't get any dessert for dinner," Katarina explained. "Really, for a heroine, Maria can be so villainous sometimes!" Maybe she was one of those dark and edgy anti-heroes Americans loved so much, who said things like 'I'm not locked in here with you. You're locked in here with me' and 'lethal protector' and things like that. "At least when you lectured me, you never threatened to take away Keith's dessert. I was the only one who didn't get dessert for not learning etiquette right."

"That…" Mother frowned. "Well, that doesn't sound like Lady Maria, but it seems to be working…?"

Katarina nodded solemnly. "Yes, I'm studying very hard so that no little girls have go without dessert."

"I want to say this is very strange…" Mother said. "But it's getting you to learn, so what do I know?"

"Well, you know a lot Mother, you wrote a very thick and heavy book about it and everything."

"The author of—"

And that was when Auntie Leona threw a pillow at mother.

A Keith Claes Interlude

Keith knew it was too good to last.

On the fourth day of Katarina's free day, the visitor he'd been dreading finally arrived.

The pain in the cullet didn't even so much as send word ahead that he as coming, of course. He just showed up and expected them to be there to receive him. Granted, that applied to pretty much all of their…friends… but still! And it wasn't like he couldn't! After all, he came to visit on the day Mother had gone off to take his aunts and uncles—he had aunts and uncles(!-!-!-!-!)—to the capital to show them around. Father was in Cleeseton getting more paperwork done so that he was ready for the International Assembly. Keith would have gone with him as well, but his parents had asked him to stay behind to entertain his cousins—he had cousins (!-!-!-!-!)—even though they were doing pretty well at that themselves.

The day had been turning out so well too.

And then one of the servants had urgently come up and whispered those terrible words.

"His highness the Third Prince has just arrived."

It was completely unnecessary. Keith could see the golden-haired nuisance behind the man, already walking towards where he, Katarina, Matthew, and Watson were doing morning drills while the others sat around and read or teased them. Despite how much he just wanted to kick out The ADVERSARY And Enemy Of The Alliance, he had to grin and bear it for Katarina's sake. After all, he was her friend too… and he supposed Keith's as well, when they had no other recourse and Katarina was far away and somewhere else and not involved… which was very rarely… or if there was a threat to Katarina…

Yes, even without Katarina between them, they weren't very friendly.

Next to him, Matthew's eyes narrowed in dislike as she subtly placed her shield between her and The ADVERSARY And Enemy Of The Alliance. He'd always been heartened that she seemed to dislike him almost as much as he did, no matter how it would normally be very ill-advised to be so openly hostile to a prince. It's what made her his favorite cousin. Cousin Watson merely looked up, pausing in his drills to see who it was.

"Katarina!" he greeted with a smile. It was a real smile. Katarina always got his real smiles. Alan and Nicol got them sometimes if it was just them. He never got them though, which was as it should be.

"Heigh-ho! Heave-ho!" Katarina continued to chant, speaking too loudly to hear as she continued her drills with that singleminded focus she could bring to bear on the strangest things. The others weren't so distracted however, and they all turned friendly, welcoming smiles in The ADVERSARY And Enemy Of The Alliance's direction.

"Oh!" Cousin Marie—infinitely superior to Mary and so much nicer!—said. "Hello, stranger. Are you a friend of Cousin Katarina's too?"

"Oh, I'm so sorry, am I intruding on something?" the ADVERSARY And Enemy Of The Alliance said, his smile becoming falsely apologetic. "I hadn't realized Katarina had company. Should I come back later?"

"Not at all, your highness," Matthew said with equally false cheer. It was so blatantly false everyone but Katarina and The ADVERSARY And Enemy Of The Alliance blinked and looked at her. "Let me introduce you to everyone. Adeths, Romanis, Arsenes, may introduce his highness, the Third Prince of Sorcier, Prince—"

Keith sighed as Matthew introduced him, expecting everyone to rise up politely with friendly bows and greetings. He could already feel himself starting to grow angry at his cousins' behalf, since he knew that The ADVERSARY And Enemy Of The Alliance would give them an empty smile and just accept such greetings as his due, then ignore their genuine welcome just to—

Wait. No one was getting up. In fact…

"Oh. You," Olga said, eye narrowed. "The fiancé."

The tone made Keith's eyebrows rise. The ADVERSARY And Enemy Of The Alliance himself looked surprised at the blatant hostility.

"Cousin Katarina told us about you," Marie said. She was no longer smiling. "Tell us, your highness, is it true you proposed to our dear cousin by telling her the scar on her face had rendered her so ugly no one else would be willing to marry her?"