The crate Dalla brought to Katarina’s study weighed about thirty pounds and contained what appeared to be every piece of paper the Montecardi family had ever touched regarding festivals, filed using a system best described as "gravity."
"This is everything we have, Signora."
"Dalla, this is a box of loose paper."
"Yes, Signora. Everything we have."
[Oh my.]
Katarina stared into the crate. There were receipts crammed against budgets crammed against what looked like a grocery list from nine years ago. One page had a sketch of a bonfire on it. Another was just the word "LANTERNS" written in large letters with no additional context.
[Okay... I restructured the regional trade economy using Seris’s old books as a starting point and somehow this is worse.]
But, this was exactly the kind of job she’d signed up for. So, she rolled up her sleeves, flexed her biceps, and started sorting.
Thirty minutes later she had four piles: financial records, planning notes, things that were definitely personal letters filed in the wrong place, and a pile she’d mentally labeled "what is this" that was growing faster than the other three combined.
The financial records told a story, at least. The last Montecardi-hosted festival had cost roughly two hundred silver marks, which was a number that would have made four-year-old Katarina faint. Current Katarina could absorb it, but not happily.
The planning notes were worse. They assumed knowledge she didn’t have.
"Standard processional order" with no explanation of what the processional order was.
"Traditional bonfire protocol" with no description of the protocol.
"Evening program as usual" with no record of what "as usual" meant.
[I don’t know any of this.]
She’d been Signora for six months. She’d been running House Montecardi’s finances for years now. She could recite the tariff schedule from memory.
But, at seventeen years of age here, she had no idea what her own people did at a harvest festival.
Vivienne Ross had been the same way. Knew every floor of Liang & Howard, every revenue stream, every department head’s quarterly target. Never once ate lunch in the break room. Hardly knew what new movies were coming out.
[I’ve been living like a hermit to get my family’s finances in order. Now, I have a task in front of me that requires cultural knowledge and I’m useless. I need help.]
Vessa was at the Montecardi estate more often than she was at her own house these days, which everyone had accepted as a basic fact of life. Like weather or Ottavia’s salt addiction.
Katarina found her in the kitchen eating a bowl of Ottavia’s stew and apparently enjoying it, which said more about Vessa’s palate than it did about the food, and walked up to her.
"I need you to come with me."
"Sex?"
"W-What!? No! No. No... Maybe later."
"Oh, okay. Why?"
"I want you to come with me to ask my mother about the festival."
Vessa’s face lit up.
"Oh! The Midsummer Market? My moms used to take me every year when I was little. It’s so much fun, Kat. There’s the bonfire and the sigil ceremony and..."
"Great. You can translate."
"Translate what? It’s your festival."
"Well, I never attended."
"What!?" It was Vessa’s turn to be shocked.
"I was busy!" Katarina pouted. "Anyway, yeah, I need your help."
Vessa looked at her for a second and then smiled. She always looked at Katarina like that when Katarina accidentally revealed how little she knew about normal life.
"Come on, Signora. Let’s go get you culturally educated."
They found Seris in the garden. She was reading, which for Seris meant she was holding a book open and staring at the vineyards while the book served as a prop for her aesthetic.
"Mother, I need to ask you about the festival."
Seris looked up from the book she wasn’t reading and her whole face changed. Her purple eyes went wide, she sat up straight, and she looked like someone had just told her it was her birthday and also that all her enemies had died painful deaths.
"You want to know about the festival?"
"I want to know about the festival."
She perked up.
"My beautiful, brilliant daughter, who has never once in seventeen years asked me a single question about Valdari tradition, wants to know about the festival?"
"I’ve asked you things!"
"You asked me how the tariff exemption system evolved from the old tributary model. That is not culture, piccola."
[Fair point.]
Seris set the book down, took both of Katarina’s hands, and physically sat her on the bench. Vessa sat cross-legged on the grass and looked thrilled about the whole thing.
"The Midsummer Market Festival," Seris began, and her voice dropped into a warm storytelling cadence, "is the most important cultural event in any Valdari district. It celebrates the harvest, but more than that, it celebrates abundance. What we’ve built, what we have, and what we’re willing to share."
Normal so far. Katarina could work with "harvest celebration."
"Every house with standing in the district presents their sigil at the bonfire. It’s a processional. The host house goes last, and the Signora lights the fire. It’s an honor and a declaration. You’re saying ’this is my house, this is my fire, and I am strong enough to hold both.’"
Also normal. Ceremonial, symbolic, a bit dramatic. She could plan around that.
"And I suppose there’s a speech," Katarina said.
"A toast," Seris corrected. "Each Signora gives one. And it’s competitive, piccola. The toasts are supposed to be impressive. Witty, bold, maybe a little threatening if you’re feeling spicy. The crowd judges."
[Public speaking competition. I gave quarterly earnings presentations to rooms full of hostile board members for a decade. I can handle a toast.]
"After the toasts, the feast runs all night. Every house contributes dishes. Wine, obviously, barrels of it, and music and dancing until dawn." Seris’s smile went soft. "I danced with your mother at a festival, you know. She stepped on my feet eleven times."
"That’s unfortunate," Katarina said.
"It was cute."
"Those aren’t mutually exclusive."
Vessa laughed. Seris continued, and her tone shifted.
"Now. The festival opens into the Night Market, and that’s where things get very fun."
Katarina blinked.
Now, she was worried. Because "fun" for this community tended to lean in a certain direction.
"Meaning?"
"Meaning clothing becomes optional, the dancing becomes intimate, and the wine stalls start selling the strong stuff!" Seris glanced at Vessa, who was nodding along like this was expected. "It’s a celebration of desire, piccola. Of abundance in all its forms. People pair off, or group up, and the Night Market provides atmosphere. Private pavilions, music, very elegant body paint."
Katarina’s brain, which had been in planning mode, stalled. She imagined Seris with her naked body painted and had to shake her head to force those thoughts out of her mind.
"Body paint?" She asked weakly.
"Oh, it’s beautiful," Vessa said. She leaned forward and her eyes were bright. "There are artists who specialize in it. You pick colors that mean things. Gold for prosperity, red for passion, blue for devotion. And they paint sigils and designs all over your body and then you dance and the paint smudges onto whoever you’re dancing with, so by the end of the night everyone is covered in each other’s colors."
Katarina thought about Vessa covered in paint next. Specifically, she thought about Vessa covered in red paint and nothing else, pressed against her, paint smearing across both their stomachs and tits while they moved together, and for a moment the garden went very warm.
"You’re thinking about it," Vessa said.
"I am not."
"You’re blushing."
"I don’t blush. I have a skin condition."
Vessa grinned. Seris looked very amused.
She continued.
"The host house provides the pavilions, the paint, the music, all of it," Seris said. "It’s traditional. It’s been part of the festival for centuries. Nobody has to participate, but it’s expected that the Signora facilitates it."
[So I’m organizing a harvest fair that turns into a city-wide orgy. With a budget, a timeline, and zero experience with Valdari cultural norms.]
"Is that everything?" Katarina asked.
Seris’s expression shifted. The warmth was still there, but her smile had thinned.
"There’s one more thing. The last time the Montecardi hosted the festival properly was nineteen years ago. Before you were born." She paused. "And some of the other houses have been talking."
"Talking about what?"
"That the Montecardi have lost their fire."
Seris said it calmly. She always said things calmly. But her hands were folded a little too tightly in her lap, and Katarina had spent enough years reading rooms to know what that meant. This wasn’t logistics to Seris. This was her family name being used as a punchline, and she’d been hearing it for years.
[So it’s not just a party. It’s a statement. It’s me standing in front of every house in the district and telling them the Montecardi are back and we’re not going anywhere.]
She looked at the vineyards stretching past the garden, green and alive and rated A-minus because Silvana loved grapes more than she loved people.
[Well, fuck. I’m actually going to have to make this spectacular.]
"Okay," she said. "I’ve got this."