Karin

Karin is the daughter of a Klassenberg merchant and current works as a lehange at the Plantin Company.

Karin accompanied her father to Ehrenfest on business. Once there, the two quickly found out about the Plantin Company and it's connection to Lady Rozemyne, prompting her father to approach the master of the Ehrenfest merchant's guild to arrange a marriage between Karin and the owner of the Plantin Company, Benno, but Benno outright refused.

When Karin's father left Ehrenfest to return home, he "forgot" his daughter.

To gather the funds for her own return she approached the Gilberta Company to sell some of her personal clothes and accessories, intenting to stay at cheap inns and take a boat ride to intercept her father in Frenbeltag. While visiting the Gilberta Company, she learned from Otto that her father did not intent to return home via boat, which Otto had learned during a previous business meeting he had with her father.

This caused Karin to go completely pale, since that meant she did not know her father's route back to Klassenberg and thus could not hope to link up with him again.

Since Otto was well aware how dangerous traveling alone was - especially for a young woman - he arranged a meeting with his brother Benno and the marchant's guild. Due to having lost his father to a bandit attack outside the secure city-walls, Benno was the most resistent to Karin leaving the city alone and thus they arranged for her to become a temporary employee at the Plantin Company until Karin's father was scheduled to once again visit Ehrenfest in the coming summer.

Ever since Karin has been desperately trying to gather information, since there is a good chance that if she managed to glean insight into some business secrets, Benno might marry her to keep the information within the family, while Benno is equally desperately trying to keep her in the dark as much as possible.

According to Corinna, Benno's sister and Otto's wife, something changed in the look of Karin's eyes at the end of autumn, leading her to believe that while Karin probably was only persuing information for business initially, she might have fallen for Benno at some point and is now persuing this course of action out of a real desire to marry him personally, rather than to just marry in the store. She expects the two to be bound by the end of winter.

Spoiler from Part 4 Volume 8 In a meeting with Rozemyne Benno begrudingly admits that Karin is an exceptionally skilled merchant and that he will incorporate many of her ideas into the running of his shop.