"Good morning, Sophia," Maria greeted as Sophia arrived at her estate.

"Nice to see you too," Sophia said, voice a little dry. "Did you enjoy your little break?"

"Very much," Maria said, still smiling. "But duty calls. Thank you for indulging me."

Sophia nodded, then handed Maria a sheet of paper.

Maria frowned. "What's this?"

"I'm notifying you of my next day off," Sophia said. "'The Tarnished Chronicles' is coming out soon, and I want to binge it. Though if it's bad, I might come back to work early."

Maria glanced at it, and nodded. "Noted. Shall we get to work then? I've had some I Scream made for us to snack on."

Sophia brightened. "Well, I wouldn't say no," she said, much more cheerfully. "Come on, let's get to work and make a ton of souls!"

The two began to walk towards their offices.

"What's that you're humming? It sounds… sort of familiar."

"I'm not exactly sure, it's just something I heard Anne humming."

"You sure? For some reason its making me think of Lady Katarina."

"Sophia, anything can make you think of Lady Katarina."

"I suppose…"

They put the tune out of their minds as they went to work…


A Millidiana Claes Interlude

Duchess Milidiana Claes stared at the envelope like it had personally offended her. That wasn't accurate, however. It was the sender of the envelope that had offended her, the envelope was just his messenger.

She supposed this was a reminder that The ADVERSARY And Enemy Of The Alliance (they weren't changing the name, mostly because he'd specifically asked them to!) should not be underestimated.

"It's doubtful he had a direct had in this," her dear Luigi reminded her, clearly trying to be reasonable. "Katarina is of age and an adult now. Even without his influence, just the fact she is engaged to him would have her involved. And even without their engagement, she would still need to participate in the International Assembly given her rank as our daughter."

"I know," Mili ground her teeth in frustration. "Still, it irks me. He'll clearly find some way to try to turn this into his advantage. Perhaps we can send a fake Katarina in her place? With so many young woman in the duchy of all ranks patterning themselves after her, surely we can find someone that looks enough like her to pass muster." Indeed, ever since the publishing of the seventh edition of 'The Noble's Proper Etiquette Reference and Manual of Propriety and Action' by some unknown but no doubt beautiful and intelligent authoress who wished to remain anonymous, a lot of young noble ladies had taken up farming. Not very well, and usually more in the position of a manager as they had hired hands do the actual farming for them. Though a few did try it themselves, saying it was akin to raising flowers but with edible results…

"Mili," her dear Luigi said gently, and she reflexively tamped down on the shiver that ran through her at his just mentioning her name, "even if found some young woman who looked exactly like her and was willing to take her place… do you really think she would be able to act enough like Katarina to pass even casual muster? The poor woman would be made out to be a fake as soon as she didn't greet the servants by name."

Mili slumped, knowing it was true. Her wonderful, shining daughter knew everyone, and they knew her in turn. A fake Katarina would be made out instantly by the lowliest servant—especially the lowliest servant, since she would likely be the only noble who'd know their names and acknowledge them directly—and the deception would instantly be revealed.

Several months ago, Mili would have feared sending her daughter to the International Assembly in case she somehow embarrassed herself with her lax regard for protocol and etiquette (and them by association, but that wasn't important). However, after seeing the progress her daughter was making under Lady Maria's tutelage—sorry, the tutelage of the mysterious tutor that Lady Maria had assigned and whom Lady Mary seemed to regard with such pride for some reason—this fear had been greatly lessened.

No, right now her greatest fear was her daughter being in the same castle as The ADVERSARY And Enemy Of The Alliance and his using the circumstance to dishonor her daughter in his attempts to circumvent Mili's refusal to permit they be married. Keith and Matthew would be there, as members of the Houses of Claes and Romani (under the Adeth) respectively, but The ADVERSARY And Enemy Of The Alliance would have the home ground advantage, with every servant and guard at his command. Darkly, she wondered how much of his grandfather The ADVERSARY And Enemy Of The Alliance had in him. The old king had been a lustful beast in heat for decades, and they still had to live with the legacy of his rule, the bloat of treacherous Marquises and Marchionesses who had been raised from his cronies and mistresses.

She felt a hand on her, looked up to see her husband smiling at her reassuringly.

"It will be all right, Mili," he said. "We'll find a way to protect our daughter. We have family, friends, and allies, and she is beloved. That in itself is a strong protection. Even if the Third Prince—sorry, The ADVERSARY And Enemy Of The Alliance—" Mili resisted the urge to push him down and offer herself to him right there as he referred to the man who might be his future king like that just because she did, "—were to try something dishonorable, he would have to essentially act alone. No one would knowingly, willingly let him do something like that to Katarina. They like her too much. And I'm sure the impressive Lady Campbell will protect her, as she has before."

Mili would have truly loved to have Maria Campbell as a knight sworn to them and their house, but the King had had other plans, and truly, she couldn't blame him. Artie had always been good at finding capable subordinates. It was why they had supported him for the throne.

"We shouldn't take advantage of her kindness, even if she will never demand we repay our debt," Mili scolded him lightly. Shaking her head, she disdainfully flicked the correspondence aside. She'd have to relay it to Lady Maria so she could inform Katarina herself and make her own preparations, but later in the day. She didn't feel like touching it again for now.

A part of her harbored the hope that Lady Maria would be able to invoke some sort of knightly tradition or something to bar Katarina's participation in the assembly, but it was a foolish hope. She had begun a study on knightly tradition once Katarina had announced her intention to follow the path of Martial Chivalry—completely coincidentally, she had heard rumors that the eighth edition of 'The Noble's Proper Etiquette Reference and Manual of Propriety and Action' would be integrating this knightly traditions more completely into its structure—and she knew there was little hope in Lady Maria finding such a reason.

Mili picked up the next piece of correspondence on her desk and felt a happy smile come over her face. It was from her family. Eagerly, she opened the envelope and read.

Slowly, Mili put down the envelope.

"Dear," she said, "we will need to have the servants prepare more rooms."


A Rafael Interlude

Except for that little thing about the paperwork—Rafael had a sneaking suspicion he'd been a bad example to the department—the rest of the day was perfectly normal, albeit filled with more meetings with other departments than usual. Apparently the other departments had taken one look at Larna showing up in his place and panicked, kicking her out and beginning discreet inquiries about whether he'd been murdered and his body parts used to make some sort of magic tool. They all looked visibly relieved to see him show up to discuss maintenance on their magic tools, though one or two were clearly discreetly checking to make sure he wasn't some sort of disguised dirt doll or Magic Tool golem Larna had made.

Rafael quickly got back to the flow of things, despite the general turmoil in the rest of the Ministry. The directors and vice-directors needed to get their departments in order, since they were required to represent the kingdom in the upcoming International Assembly. The Magic Tool Laboratory found this extremely worrying, since Director Hart, the ostensible actual Director of the department, tended to get lost easily, while also being very forgetful and hard to notice. There was a not-unreasonable fear that if they let him go to the castle, he'd get lost and starve to death.

"You're kidding, right?" Sienna Nelson said.

"Sienna, we kid about Brad's weights, Larna's Magic Tools and Sora's disturbing correspondence with a child," Rafael said. "We don't kid about Director Hart's navigation problem. We need someone to accompany him at all times or else he'll get lost."

"And we get the job because we're the newbies?" Marsha Catley said.

"Actually, you get it because you're the most presentable," Rafael said, waving at Lisa Norman, who was talking to Laura through her handpuppet; Laura a huge, musclebound figure in makeup and a dress; Nix, whose plunging neckline showed off her sculpted chest; Brad, who was doing his paperwork one-handed—his left hand, at that—while her did curls with his other hand; and Sora, who… all right, was diligently doing paperwork at his desk. "I'd have Sora do it, but he's been asked by the Royal Guard to assist in security measures, owing to his skills, so he's out. Unless you really want Laura to do it…?"

They all looked at Laura, who loomed.

"I'd love to volunteer, but… I can't safely be in the presence of the Third Prince," Marsha said evasively.

Rafael gave her a long look. "I won't ask."

"Thank you," Marsha said.

"I guess it's up to you, Sienna," Rafael said. "Director Hart's a gentleman, so he shouldn't be a problem to accompany. Although…"

"Although?" Sienna said, not liking the way he was trailing off.

"The two of you will probably need to wear a shackle between you two to make sure he doesn't just wander off when you're not looking."

Sienna stared at him. Rafael shrugged. "Getting lost and being very hard to notice at the same time is a serious problem."

"Sorry about this," Director Hart said apologetically.

Both young women jumped in surprise. "Director Hart! You were there?" Sienna exclaimed.

"I've been here the whole time," he sighed.

Rafael held up the shackle. "We need it to get sized for you so it's comfortable, so can you hold out your arm…?"


Sophia Ascart went home confused, frustrated and a little aroused, which was why she was confused and frustrated. Really, the day had been incredibly confusing for her. While it had been a perfectly normal business day of sorting through the commissions for nightflowers—they were being booked well in advance, since Sophia and Maria had put a limit on how many displays they could put on in given week, both to keep from overworking their employees and to induce artificial rarity—for some strange reason, she'd been getting more and more aroused all day. She had no idea why.

Absently, she hummed the tune she'd heard Maria humming, which had been very catchy for some reason, even as she grew more aroused and frustrated…