A Katarina Interlude

Katarina felt she was doing something wrong.

At the moment, she was enjoying herself talking to Achmed and Achmed—who were from Ethenell, and regretted their friend Achmed had wandered off and couldn't join in on the fun—Lei-Lei and Lin-Lin—who were of course from Xiarmah and were wearing very nice hats—Mircalla—from La Sable—Fia, Yulia and Ririane—from Drang— and translating for Hitomi. It was a bit slow, but everyone was a slow talker, even her. She had to take breaks every so often to take a drink to soothe her throat, since it was a bit too wet to be able to make undead noises consistently. Still, it was fun and she was making friends!

That's why she felt like she was doing something wrong. Usually, when she was having fun, she wasn't acting like a proper noble, or at least not using the right etiquette. Since she was having so much fun with her new friends, it was probably one of those things, or maybe even both, and they were just too nice to mention it!

She could already feel her mother's disappointment. Maria would probably decide that Shana hadn't been teaching her enough and take away her dessert!

…

So she should stay away from them so they didn't find out! After all, if they didn't know, then they couldn't punish her—and Shana—for it!

It was a good plan, one that she actually had a chance of pulling off. The king was over there in there, and Katarina could just barely see Maria's head next to him. If she stayed away from there, she wouldn't have to worry about Maria, and all she'd have to keep an eye out for would be her mother.

In this keeping an eye out, however, there was someone she didn't see. She'd been hoping to find Siegadme so she could introduce her to everyone, but for some reason a lot of the New Catarina noble women looked a lot like her! Several times she thought she'd seen her friend and started walking towards one of the while-clad women, only to find that it was someone else entirely! Why did all the women from there all have long brown hair worn in the same haircut?

"Oh, the look is very popular nowadays because of the Queen," the woman she'd been speaking to thinking she was Siegadme, who'd introduced herself as Lady Siegevey, said, "in much the same way the Wanderer's Elevation set and fashion souls seems to be all the rage here in Sorcier, and how reproductions of your queen's dress are popular."

So after that, Katarina tried to be careful while looking for her friend, since she might accidentally approach New Catarina's queen thinking she was Siegadme, and that… would probably be awkward.

In the meantime, she and her new friends chatted. Lin-Lin and Lei-Lei, it turned out, were members of Xiarmah's Ministry of Those-Who-Live-In-Death. The two of them had passed Xiarmah's very difficult civil service exam, a test so difficult that Lin-Lin had actually died in the middle of it. However, instead of going beyond death and coming back to life by sheer will thanks to her Dark Soul, her body had instead merely continued to move, and it had taken her two days to realize she had become undead, when she'd started losing her sense of taste and smell.

"At first we thought it was part of this epidemic that had started spreading from the meat market," Lin-Lin said, some of her words almost intelligible, but mostly coming out as groans, "but when we visited the doctor, he pronounced me dead. It was a little scandalous at the time. My betrothed had to cancel our engagement because no one wanted to marry a dead girl with no merits to her name, no matter who her father was."

"The toad tried to switch the engagement with me, if you can believe that," Lei-Lei, the still-living twin, said indignantly. "With my sister right there! Naturally he was courting death, so I slapped him across the face and set the family's experts on him to see him out."

Katarina gasped, and when she'd finished translating, so did Hitomi. "That's terrible!" She paused. "Uh, did something, uh, terrible happen to him?"

"Oh, do not worry. We are watchful for any revenge on his part, though it's unlikely to be anything competent. Last we heard, he was full of gambling debts, and was on poor terms with his clan because he tried to set up his own engagement without their leave."

Katarina looked at them with bemusement even as she translated for Hitomi's benefit.

"You're well rid of him, I say," Mircalla hissed, followed by modulated moans. Despite the fact she'd lost her voice, her features were still perfectly human, even if she was paler than Sophia. "Personally, I don't see what he found so objectionable with the arrangement. If he could not marry you until you had merits to your name, then he should have just waited until you did."

"I know! That's what I said! It's not like it would have taken long! I scored very high on the Civil Service exam!"

Mircalla was a member of the La Sable delegation, but while she was a senior member of the diplomatic corps who had managed to keep her position through the civil war and the current continuing unrest—she had asked for Katarina's help in translating for her during the negotiations, and Katarina had cheerfully agreed— and had been coming to international assemblies for decades, in this instance she had not been invited because of her skills, but because of her good looks.

"They had the gall to say it to my face," she hissed, her pale face contorting angrily. "That buffoon Horntuba wanted only good-looking people on the delegation, which utterly gutted the economists, since all the capable ones… well, they didn't pass his muster. The Etrani are going to eat them alive. Possibly literally, from what I hear of the new girl gathering Lord Souls there."

"Um, if it's not rude to ask…" Katarina said, "how exactly do you stay so… well put together? I don't think you're even wearing makeup!" She knew makeup could be used to make zombies look like living people—or at least, that's what that weird dream she had of being a zombie idol in Saga prefecture told her—but that didn't seem to be the case.

"She said it, not me," Lei-Lei said as Katarina translated for Hitomi, "but I'd really like to know too, Elder Sister!"

"Ah, it's not really all that secret, but you need to have the procedure done while you're still fairly juicy," Mircalla said. "Don't worry, I think you can still get it done, Lady Lei-Lei. It's called saponification. For one thing, you need to rest about a year in a cool cellar… "

While Katarina knew Achmed, since she'd helped him find the library, but his friend Achmed was new. He was a representative for his tribe in the interior of Ethenell, where it was too hot for the living to survive and full of giant aunts and ancient abominations, like giant skeleton dogs. Katarina had been horrified hearing that such things existed.

"Really, giant skeleton dogs?" she groaned.

Achmed nodded, a full-body shudder rattling his bones. "Yes. Whole villages of innocent undead can be depopulated, their people taken in the beasts' jaws. They like to run into the deep dunes, and bury folk in the sands!" He shuddered again. "It happened to me once, when I was young and still had a little meat on my bones. I was just taking a sand bath to polish myself off, and this giant dog appeared out of nowhere, its jaws snapping together as it hungered for me. It grabbed my in its jaws, and I felt it crushing me… " He shuddered again, all of his bones rattling. "Even today, centuries later, the thought terrifies me."

"Oh, you poor dear," Katarina groaned and hissed, giving him a hug. "There, there. There aren't any bad dogs here. If there, were, all the knights would be screaming and drawing weapons. You're safe, you're safe…" It was a strange-feeling hug, since he was literally all robes and bones, but he stopped shuddering, so he must be feeling better.

The rest of the gala actually went fairly well, in Katarina's opinion. She was able to avoid her mother and Maria for the rest of it so they wouldn't see her and scold her for being improper. For once, she also stayed away from the buffet. In a rare moment of… not insight, but rather empathy, Katarina figured that it wouldn't really be all that polite to eat in front of people who couldn't. Yes, Lady Mircalla was holding a cup of what looked like wine she occasionally drank from, but as she explained, it was actually a special moisturizing potion she was taking to help her verbalize better for the negotiations tomorrow, since the translator she'd been assigned had been young, good looking, and was not a capable translator at all.

When the gala started letting out at about the middle of the afternoon, Katarina said goodbye to her new friends and told them she'd look forward to seeing them tomorrow when she translated—if she was allowed—and made sure to help Hitomi-chan get back to her husband. He smiled happily as she began to regale him with how much fun she'd had.

"Ah, thank you for bringing my sister-in-law back, Lady Claes," Duke Folken said, smiling like the Third Prince did often did, hinting of possible black-heartedness. Still, he fond look he gave his brother said he probably wasn't a complete black-hearted scoundrel.

"It was my pleasure, your grace," Katarina said with happy honesty.

"If you don't mind my asking, how did you come to learn how to speak the tongue of Ashina? It is a distant land that does not have commerce with Sorcier, so it is curious you know it."

Katarina stared at him blankly. "Why wouldn't I know it?" After all, Fortune Lover was a Japanese game.

"Well, you're Sorcieri. I doubt Ashinese is something you grew up speaking."

"Actually, the language is Ashinago," Katarina corrected politely. "Don't worry, it's a common mistake."

"Ah. I stand corrected, then. Still, I'm curious how you came to speak it."

Katarina frowned, perplexed at the strange question. "I just do. Why wouldn't I?"

"And your ability to speak Hollow?"

"Oh, that," Katarina said, relaxing. That was a question she could actually answer. "I had a dream where I was a z—Hollow singer, and remembered all the words."

The duke stared at her. "You… dreamed it."

"Yup," Katarina said, glad to have straightened that out.

"I… see…" the duke said. "Well, thank you for indulging my curiousity, Lady Katarina. I shall detain you no longer, if you have pressing business to be. I believe I saw your brother in that direction." He gestured off to one side.

"Ah, Keith! I forgot all about him!" Katarina just barely remembered to not run. With some many people still around, she'd just exhaust her stamina going around them. Instead, she set off on a determine walk, keeping an eye out for her brother.

Folken Fanel, of the duchy of Fanelia, watched after the remarkable young woman. Literally remarkable, as one couldn't help making remarks of her. He could understand her father's fondness for her. Still, she clearly wasn't a caster build, since int was clearly her dump stat.

She was also clearly a reincarnated soul, likely of someone who had resided in Ashina in a previous life. An interesting oddity, noteworthy but nothing particularly useful, save perhaps her ability to communicate fluently with his sister-in-law. He of course spoke Ashinago fluently, as did his brother. It had been difficult to learn, but well worth the effort, since it would have been churlish of him to not be able to speak to his brother's beloved like a civilized person.

Idly, he wondered if her family knew of her nature….

A/N: (ten minutes of unskippable mocking laughter)