School was not what Katarina expected.
On Earth, school had been a building full of children who didn't want to be there, taught by adults who had stopped wanting to be there about a decade ago. Vivienne had treated it the way she treated everything else: as a system to be mastered, optimized, and moved past as quickly as possible. She'd graduated two years early and never looked back.
This was different.
The school sat on a ridge above Vellasera, a wide stone building with open archways that let the sea breeze through the classrooms and, based on the visible crack running along the south wall, hadn't seen a maintenance budget in years. About forty kids, ages seven to thirteen, were split into groups by ability rather than age. The teachers were local Valdari who volunteered in rotating shifts, which was equal parts charming and terrifying.
[A volunteer teaching model. No standardized curriculum, no formal accreditation, no quality control. This is either very innovative or very negligent and, if the pattern is to hold, I would go with the latter.]
The reading and arithmetic were beneath her. Obviously. Back on Earth she'd been literate in two languages before most of these kids could hold a spoon, and her talent had come to this new world with her. But she sat through the lessons without complaint, because being the weird overachiever was a worse strategic position than being the quiet kid who kept her head down.
The history, though. Now, THAT was useful.
The teacher, a retired merchant named Aurelia who had a voice like gravel in a bucket, spent the first lesson talking about the Valdari trade wars of three centuries ago. Not some sanitized version, either, but the real thing. Which houses fell, which houses rose, who betrayed whom over a spice route, and how a single failed shipment of volcanic salt triggered a cascade of defaults that bankrupted four families in six months.
Not to mention the beheadings.
[That's a supply chain contagion event, eh? Four bankruptcies from one failed shipment. That's tough.]
Katarina took notes and she organized the information in her head. The other kids were less interested. Two in the back were flicking pebbles at each other, a girl near the window was braiding her own hair.
Nobody talked to Katarina. She'd been here three days and the social dynamics had already crystallized in the way that children's social dynamics always do, fast and ruthless. She was the quiet, intense girl who sat in the second row and watched the teacher like she was memorizing her, which she was, but they didn't need to know that.
[Good. I don't need friends. I need information.]
---
Break happened around midday.
Kids spilled out of the archways into a courtyard with a stone fountain and a few scraggly trees that looked like they'd given up on life around the same time the south wall cracked. There were groups forming and conversations erupting and someone produced a ball and a game started that Katarina didn't understand and didn't care to.
She sat on a bench at the edge of the courtyard with her back against the wall and her eyes on the crowd. Force of habit. Vivienne had always eaten lunch at her desk, but the instinct to map a room's social structure was the same whether the room was a corporate cafeteria or a schoolyard.
[The tall kid with the blue skin is the social center. Everyone orbits her. The two girls by the fountain are the secondary cluster, and the kid sitting alone by the tree is the outcast. Standard hierarchy.]
Someone sat down next to her.
No warning, no introduction, just a body dropping onto the bench with the casual confidence of someone who had never once considered that they might not be welcome.
The girl was about Katarina's age, maybe a little younger. Pink skin, dark hair cut short and uneven like she'd done it herself with a knife and a vague sense of optimism. She had a cloth bundle in her lap that she was already unwrapping.
And she went:
"Want half?"
She held out a piece of flatbread with some kind of spiced meat folded into it. Her hand was steady and her face had already decided Katarina was going to say yes.
Katarina looked at the bread, then at the girl, then back at the bread.
"I... have my own lunch."
"Yeah, but mine's better! My mom makes the spice blend herself. She says it's a family secret."
Katarina blinked.
"... Is that so?"
[Who exactly is this person?]
Katarina took the bread. It was good. The spice blend was, in fact, just salt and pepper and a bunch of what tasted like cumin, but the ratio was solid.
"I'm Vessa," the girl said. "Vessa Talori. My family runs the dry goods shop on the harbor road. Do you know it? It's the one with the blue awning. My mom says the awning is our 'brand identity' but it's really just because blue fabric was on sale when she bought it!"
Katarina blinked again.
The girl kept going.
"My other mom's been sick," Vessa continued, tearing into her own half of the bread. "But she's getting better. The healer said another month, maybe two. She's got this thing with her lungs where the qi doesn't circulate right, so she gets tired really fast, but she's doing exercises and it's helping. Mom's running the shop alone until she's back, which is why I'm helping more after school. She's great with customers but terrible with inventory. Last month she ordered twice as much lamp oil as we needed because she forgot she'd already placed an order the week before!"
"Uh huh..."
[She has been talking for fifteen seconds and I already know her name, family business, shop location, and her mother's approach to marketing. This is either the most efficient networker I've ever met or the least guarded person alive.]
... Why was she telling Katarina this? Katarina had said approximately four words to this girl and was getting her family's full financial disclosure in return.
"I'm learning formation work," Vessa said. "For preserving goods. You know, the arrays that keep food fresh? I'm not very good yet but Maestra Aurelia says I have a feel for it. I think she says that to everyone, but still. It's cool. You draw these patterns with qi-infused ink and then you channel energy through them and the food just doesn't rot. Which is kind of amazing when you think about it. Like, the bread just sits there being bread for weeks."
She took another bite.
"What do you do?"
Katarina stared at her.
"I study," Katarina said.
"What do you study?"
"Everything."
Vessa nodded like that was a perfectly reasonable answer and not at all strange.
"Cool."
They ate in what Katarina would have called a comfortable silence, except she wasn't comfortable, because she didn't know what to do with a person who just sat next to you and gave you food and told you about their entire life's story.
The bell rang. Kids started filtering back inside. Vessa hopped off the bench, brushed crumbs off her shirt, and looked at Katarina.
"See you tomorrow!"
She was gone before Katarina could respond, jogging toward the archway with her empty cloth bundle flapping in one hand.
Katarina sat on the bench for another few seconds.
The Ledger pulsed.
New contact added: Vessa Talori.
Family: Talori Dry Goods, Vellasera harbor district.
Strategic value: Negligible.
Threat level: None.
Katarina read it twice. Then she stood up and walked back to class.
[What the hell just happened? Did I just... Make a friend?]