It had been a while since Maria had had a meal with so many of her friends. She was surprised to find she'd missed it. It wasn't that she didn't like having lunch with her mother and the children and oh formless Oedon, had mother and Anne been flirting under the table while she'd been tempting Rafael to try and ravish her–!

That line of thought was backstabbed, sent tumbling to the ground and attacked twice in rapid succession to be sure as Sophia and Matthew both struck her upside the head at the same time. "Don't think about it," they chorused together.

"That way lies madness," Sophia said.

"Eye gouging, screaming in the middle of the night madness," Matthew confirmed.

"Thank you," Maria said, before pausing and realizing what they were saying. "You know."

The two of them just looked at her and held out their fists to the side in the ancient gesture of quiet resolve in the face of overwhelming, doomed odds.

A part of Maria was embarrassed her private business had been revealed. Another part of her was grateful for the support. Well, given how many people knew what happened, she wasn't going to be keeping it secret anyway. She raised her fist and echoed the gesture.

Mary looked at the three accountants. "Did any of you understand what all that was?"

Lady Harker and Jade Sevenights shook their heads, still looking nervous at all the prince's fiancées in the room.

"It's a gesture between knights meaning solidarity in enduring the hardships before them," Amber Sevenights said.

Her sister gave her a look.

"What?" she said. "I once did Dame Stridberg's wife's taxes during my apprenticeship."

"Sensei, when am I going to learn what all those gestures mean?" Katarina asked.

"After your etiquette training," Maria said. "It will be part of your lessons on knightly traditions."

"So… in ten years?"

"Hopefully not, I know Shana can do better."

"Don't worry Lady Katarina!" Mary said. "My cute little student won't need ten years to teach you etiquette!" Then, as if honesty wouldn't let her be that optimistic, she added, "Maybe in just seven years?"

Maria didn't let her skepticism at Shana being able to perform that miracle show.

Anyway, it had been a while since Maria had had a meal with so many of her friends. She was surprised to find she'd missed it. It wasn't that she didn't like having lunch with her mother and the children and don't think about it, don't think about it, don't think about it, but it was nice. She found herself hoping the princes and Lord Keith would find time before Katarina's ended to visit, so that everyone would be together again.

The three accountants had been surprised to find Mary and Katarina joining them for lunch. Doubly so when they finally recognized who they actually were since they'd been dressed like farmers coming from a morning out in the fields, which as exactly what they'd been doing. They had the familiar look of confusion of someone trying to come to grips with all the strange and exaggerated rumors about Katarina in the face of the real Katarina.

"So you work for Maria now?" Katarina asked Lady Harker, the one closest to her. "What's that like?"

"It's…" Lady Harker glanced at Maria, obviously not wishing to say anything that constituted an insult or dissatisfaction. "Different. Very different, certainly, from anyone I'd work for before."

"It's the first time I've had such a nice office," Jade Sevenights said.

"Umbasa, yes," her sister said. "I never realized how much I wanted an office that was an actual office, and not just a chair and a tea trolley in the corner of the room."

"And then they kept assuming we were a maid and telling us to take the trolley and serve tea," Jade sighed. "If I wanted to be a maid, I wouldn't have become an accountant!"

"Fear not," Maria said. "Bookkeeping will be the only thing asked of you in my employ."

"That would be a nice change of pace, Lady Campbell," Amber Sevenights said.

Jade shuddered. "Remember the time they assumed because we were accountants they could have us tutor their daughter in math?"

"I'd managed to block that out. Thank you so much for reminding me," her sister glared.

"Don't worry, Working for Lady Maria is great!" Katarina assured them. "She's really nice and she bakes the most wonderful snacks!"

The three stared at her. Maria couldn't fault them. Baking wasn't something nobles, even mere knights, were known for. Even knights were only known for trying to make their own Siegbraus and bad attempts at Estus soup.

"Katarina," Maria said. "I'm not paying my accountants in cookies."

"You're not?" Katarina sounded shocked. She turned towards the accountants and leaned forward conspiratorially. "First chance you get to ask for a raise, ask for cookies." She winked at them like this was some kind of wonderful advise.

Maria rolled her eyes at Katarina and– wait, Mary, Sophia, Matthew, mother, Anne, why are you all nodding?


"Wait, so these children aren't all ghosts and we're not being haunted by their voices at night?" Joanna said.

Katarina gave the woman a baffled look as she handed the woman her bowl of ice-cream. They didn't have sprinkles, so it had been dusted with cookie crumbs from one of the knockoff cookie Maria's kitchen staff made as filler desserts. Which, to be fair, was good, but they were only regular good, not Maria!good. "Uh, no?" she said. "Why would you think that?"

"All we ever heard was wailing and crying and laughing but when we asked the steward if Lady Campbell had any children, he said no!" Joanna said.

"Well, yeah," Katarina confirmed. "Maria doesn't have any children. She's not even married yet, just engaged." She was pretty sure Maria was also still a virgin too. Really, were her relationship points with Rafael that low, or had she not yet bought the gift item that let her get the sexy time CGs?

No, wait maybe she was getting this wrong, maybe it was Rafael's relationship points with Maria that was low, or he was the one who hadn't bought the gift item yet… No, wait, that can't be right, Maria was the Main Character, the MC, she–

Katarina suddenly laughed.

Joanna looked at her in confusion. "Er, Lady Claes? Are you all right?"

"I just got it!" Katarina snickered. "MC! I can't believe I didn't realize before now!"

Joanna gave her a weird smile. "So, the children?"

"Well, from what I remember, half are wards of the kingdom that Maria is taking care of, and the other half are children under her protection after she saved them from bad people," Katarina said. She didn't want to use the word 'slavers'. Joanna seemed like she'd had a very sheltered life, it might be too shocking.

"And… the women?" Joanna said.

"Also under her protection, same as some of the children," Katarina said. Would those be the kind of people she'd have to deal with when she finally graduated to becoming a knight? She hoped not. They sounded terrible. Though she supposed it would probably be safer than saving maidens kidnapped by dragons. Less likely to be set on fire. "It's really sad. They're all for foreign countries, so they didn't even know the language when they first came here. And they can't even go home either, because they don't have anything to go back to."

"I see… so, Lady Campbell employs them as servants?" Joanna said.

"No, they're just under her protection," Katarina said.

Joanna frowned. "But… isn't her maid a foreigner?"

"Oh yeah, Sadako-chan," Katarina said. "Well, yes, but only her. Everyone else only does some chores like keeping their own part of the house clean or doing their laundry."

"So… they're not employed under her, but they live with her? Have they sworn fealty?" Joanna asked.

"Some of them? Not all though," Katarina said.

"So, they're not eligible as a tax deduction…" Joanna muttered. She started eating the ice-cream absently, muttering to herself. "No, wait, maybe if we list them as that…?"


"I'm eligible for a what?" Maria demanded, outrage, shock, confusion and a sudden rage rising within her before she firmly suppressed it. Perhaps she'd misheard.

"You are eligible for a tax deduction, Lady Campbell," Lady Harker explained. "I've been speaking with Lady Claes regarding the circumstances of your women–"

"They are not my women," Maria corrected coldly. "They are under my care and protection as my wards."

"Forgive me your ladyship, but given the age of many of them, that does not legally apply," Lady Harker said. "Unless you were to declare them mentality deficient or otherwise cognitively impaired, they are legally adults and cannot be declared your wards."

"I am aware of that, Lady Harker," Maria said, trying to reign in the curtness in her voice. The woman was only trying to do the job Maria had hired her for, which was to deal with tax matters. "The term is purely figurative."

"I understand your ladyship, but be that as it may, it is a term that does not legally apply here," the woman said. "As they are not related to you in a legally recognized capacity, you can't really file them as your legal dependent any other way."

"So your suggested method of legally filing them as my dependents is to list them as my concubines?" Maria said flatly.

Lady Harker flinched, and Maria realized she might have made her voice too flat. "The alternative is hiring them as servants and listing them as staff," the accountant said. "Or we could just neglect to mention them in the tax report. Who even knows the exist?"

"The First, Second, Third and Fourth princes. Their fiancées ," Maria listed. "My liege, his majesty the King, to whom I am directly sworn. The Prime Minister. The Prime Minister's children. My mother."

Lady Harker visibly winced with every mention. "Would they be willing to overlook the matter?" Lady Harker said, sounding like she knew it was an absurd request.

"I would weep for this country if they did," Maria said. "However, they will not need to. As a knight, I will not shirk this duty, no matter how… difficult. That said, this is not a matter I can handle on my own. I must recourse to ask for the assistance of the greatest legal mind in all of Sorcier."

"And… who would that be, your ladyship?" Lady Harker asked.

"The Third Prince," Maria said.

Why was Lady Harker paling? "Your ladyship, I don't think you can just walk up to the Third Prince as ask him about tax law!"

"I won't need to," Maria said. "I told him his fiancée is free of training duties for the week. We just have to wait for him to get his work affairs in the capital in order so he can show up. He should be here tomorrow."

Why had Lady Harker paled even more?


Three days later, The Third Prince still hadn't made an appearance, even though Maria had sent him another letter telling him Katarina was free and not in training.

On the fourth day, Maria rose from her bed, carefully disentangling herself from Sadako's arms around her waist and Rafael's arm around her shoulder. Carefully, methodically, she lay out her hunter garb, and her throwing knives, the bottles of oil stopped with rags she'd prepared the night before, her revolvers, her Rakuyo, and even summoned her Dark Familiar Rakuyo from her shadow. She dressed with care, arming herself to the teeth.

Rafael and Anne looked at her worriedly over breakfast, as did many of the older children who knew trouble and violence was coming when they saw it. Breakfast was strangely quiet, despite the pleasant buzz of conversations of both adults and children alike.

Maria waited for the carriage to take Rafael to the Ministry, standing in wait and watching as the children started the morning work on the fields, Katarina obvious by her height.

Finally, her carriage arrived. She boarded it and it began to roll towards the capital.

There was clearly something wrong with the Third Prince! Someone must have used Dark Magic on him to control his mind! It was the only rational explanation for why he still hadn't been over to visit Katarina!

Determinedly, Lady Maria Campbell, Knight of Sorcier, set off the save her friend and perhaps extort free tax law advise from him in the process!