Chapter Text
Nile Freeman is determined to compete in the joust.
Her father, Sir Gideon, Duke of Freemanshire, was a tournament champion and the best man she’s ever known. He raised his eldest child as a squire, no matter that she’s a girl. He and Nile’s mother encouraged Nile and her younger brother in whatever pursuits interested them. Little Indus loved machines and the stars and the many discoveries coming from the academies of the East. As they grew, Indy spent more and more time indoors, studying his Arabic so he could read of the latest wonders of science, and Nile followed in her father’s footsteps on the backs of horses and at the hilts of swords.
But their poppa is gone now. Killed in the joust.
Lady Dorothy, Duchess of Freemanshire in power as well as name now that she is widowed, is on her way north to their home to see to the necessary arrangements, and to mourn her husband in the comforting arms of her sisters and their children. After the funeral, Indy was bade return quickly to his apprenticeship at the laboratory.
Nile is on the road to her first tournament not as a knight’s cherished daughter — no longer a squire now that she’s in the bloom of maidenhood — but wearing her father’s well-loved armor. She is to be a knight.
“Sir Nile!” calls her dear friend Yusuf from his position at the head of their party.
Nile squints out at him and sees a figure lying in the road ahead. Not just practicing her new title, then, but upholding the ruse before others. She shares a glance with Sébastien and they both urge their horses to catch up to their friend and the stranger.
The stranger is a pale man with large eyes, wearing nothing but his drawers and a lone sandal on his left foot.
“Hello there,” she says. “I am Sir Nile. My companions and I are on the road to the tournament. Are you all right?”
“Charmed, my liege,” says the stranger with a deep bow fit for a court, not for a dusty roadside nor such a state of undress. “I am Nicolò.”
Sébastien introduces himself and extends his hand to shake.
Yusuf is resting his hand on the hilt of his sword. Nile doesn’t envy Nicolò being on the receiving end of Yusuf’s assessing gaze. After another long look, her friend finally says, “Yusuf,” and he nods at the stranger but does not offer his hand.
Nicolò smiles only somewhat pleadingly at Nile. “I am fallen upon hard times,” he says, “but skilled with a sword and willing to work, if I may be of service to you?”
Nile accepts the offer of a third man in her corner, and they continue on their way after a brief and unspoken argument that results in Nicolò borrowing Sébastien’s cloak and sharing a saddle with Yusuf.
By the time they reach the tournament grounds, several things have happened.
Nicolò has revealed himself an inveterate gambler as well as a capable swordsman. Nile has mastered Nicolò’s favorite swordwork maneuver and reveled in the look of shocked delight on his face as she felled him. Nicolò has discovered the truth of Sir Nile and her tricky eligibility for the tournament ahead.
Yusuf has stared daggers at these proceedings and threatened Nicolò into silence with such vehemence that the new member of their party went very red in the face indeed.
Sébastien has snickered at these antics, and he has double-checked his forgery of Nile’s papers at least thrice.
It is no tragedy to be a daughter, but in this land, if a woman wishes to follow in her father’s footsteps and inherit his trade, she must have special dispensation from the king. And Sir Gideon had an enemy who was highly placed at court and whispered many a false word of the Freemans to any who might listen.
Nile hates to lie, but this seems her best path to honoring her father’s legacy.
“Nile my beloved and dearest friend!” says Yusuf in an only slightly quieted imitation of his stadium voice. “Your deeds shall soon be known to all across this land!”
He’s practicing for his role as her announcer, she knows, but his praise is for the stick of meat she’s just handed him.
Nile grew up with Yusuf and Sébastien and the other young squires of knights and lords across these many lands. Yusuf’s father, an influential merchant, sent the boy and two of his older sisters across the sea to Europe when they were young, to make connections and learn the ways of distant neighbors with whom they might expand their trade. He’s much taller than he was the last time Nile saw him, but no less quick with a smile and a hug and a kind word.
Sébastien is somehow even taller than Yusuf now, with a full, soft beard that Nile finds her eyes drawn to, though she can’t say quite why. Sébastien was rough-and-tumble as a boy, slow to warm to books despite the frustration of his accomplished Torah scholar father, but Nile knows he’s become a voracious reader from the ever-longer letters he’s written her in these past few years.
It’s funny, how they’ve changed, and how they haven’t. The three of them were thick as thieves as children, Yusuf and Sébastien protecting small but fierce Nile from the other boys looking too closely for the secret she was hiding under her baggy clothes. Sébastien always crafted the best wooden swords, and Yusuf taught Nile the most beautiful hair braiding styles of his land, and they hauled horse feed and played pranks on the other young squires and ran wild in the fields in a childhood that still leaves Nile breathless to think of it.
The four of them and their horses bedded down quickly that first night on pleasantly clean straw in the tournament’s tent village, and now it is morning and Nile is breathless once more, as the time of her first tilt draws near.
Yusuf is outside their tent practicing his announcement of his honored liege. Nicolò is nowhere to be found, presumably to wager on the competition, and Yusuf is much brighter for his departure. “I simply don’t trust him,” Yusuf tells Nile when she asks. “You are too important to me. And he is... troublesome.”
“His rump is troublesome, you mean,” mutters Sébastien. Nile hears, but she doesn’t think Yusuf does.
Sébastien. His hands are gentle as he helps Nile into her father’s armor. Her armor. It is hers now, and she is Sir Nile, and —
“Nile,” he says, and it sounds like he’s been trying to get her attention for some time.
“Hmm?” she finally says when she realizes.
“Shall I help with your hair or would you like me to get Yusuf?”
The gorgeous purple silk shimmers where the sunlight reaches through the seams of the tent and across the breadth of it. A gift from her mother on her sixteenth birthday. Beautiful enough to match her daughter’s beautiful face, Lady Dorothy said, and hardy enough to stand guard for Nile’s hair against the heavy helmet of a knight.
Sébastien is looking at her expectantly. Nile’s heart is pounding. It won’t be long now before she really and truly is a knight like her father before her.
“You can. Thank you, Sébastien.” She lays her hand on his arm, brief but firm, and gives him a squeeze that she hopes communicates how glad she is that he’s here with her.
He makes quick work of wrapping her braids and securing the scarf. Nile focuses on the way he bites his lip in concentration.
She has prepared for this day for many years. That this day has come earlier than planned is a tragedy, but she knows her father is looking down on her with pride. Even if she comes in last, as long as she gives an honest effort and treats her competitors and all she meets with respect, she will be doing right by her father’s legacy.
Sébastien is standing in front of her with her helmet in his hands. And then he’s pulling her gauntlets over each of her hands and attaching them firmly with their little ties.
“Sir Nile, most honorable knight in all the land,” he says quietly.
Something runs through her at the feeling of her father’s armor embracing her, emboldening her. She winks at Sébastien before flipping down her visor and walking proudly through the tent flap towards her destiny.
Yusuf and Sébastien are shouting themselves hoarse. Sir Nile has done herself proud — third on a leaderboard of twenty knights! Nicolò appears pleased as well, from fifty paces away where he’s counting his winnings.
“You’re welcome, Nicolò!” calls Nile as she leads her horse past him to their tent.
He salutes her cheekily. “I’m off to peruse the market, Sir Nile, do you require anything?”
She says, “No, thank you,” and waves him on his way.
What she requires is a warm bath and a long sleep and perhaps several poultices. She is tall, but not so tall as her father was, and not nearly as broad. Their attempts to pad her figure to better fit her father’s armor will require more adjustments.
Yusuf and Sébastien both hiss at the bruises they find as they help her out of the armor. Sébastien reaches out to the angry spot of abraded skin peeking out from her tunic across her collarbone, but he seems to think better of it and snatches his hand back before his fingertips touch her skin.
Yusuf picks up Nile’s breastplate from the ground and holds it at arm’s length, studying it as if it were a painting. “There are several talented smiths gathered for the tournament. Perhaps there is one trustworthy to tailor your armor, my liege?”
He’s quirking an eyebrow at her, requesting permission, so she smiles at him. “Thank you, Yusuf, I would be grateful for that.”
By the time Yusuf returns, Sébastien has brought her water, and seen to her wounds and her horse, and is starting to concern himself with their dinner. He’s about to take his knife to a small pile of potatoes when Yusuf insists they must go now to meet a smith he has found.
And that’s how Nile meets Andromache.
“Call me Andy,” says the smith. She takes off her heavy glove and extends her hand to Nile. “I would be honored,” she says as they shake, “to armor such a warrior.”
Nile likes the glint she sees in Andy’s eyes, amused, pleased, but firm as steel against any who might bring trouble to her door. She knows the feeling.
The four of them talk animatedly about the provenance of Nile’s father’s armor, and the alterations that would best protect Nile from blows and discovery alike, and the great skill apparent in the other creations in Andy’s shop. They invite her to join them for the evening meal, and while Andy demurs, she promises to accept another time before the tournament is over.
Later, around the fire, Yusuf is passing the last of the bread to Nile when she notices Nicolò go alert. “We have visitors,” he says, gesturing behind her.
The visitors are Lady Quỳnh, Lady Jay, and Lady Dizzy, who it turns out have come to flirt with the mysterious new victor.
Nile was prepared to be sore from the joust. She was prepared to maintain the façade of Sir Nile around the tournament goers. She was not prepared, not one bit, for the overwhelming, exhilarating experience of beautiful women clamoring for her attention.
Nile does her best to emulate Yusuf’s easy confidence as their guests settle around the fire with stories of their travels to the tournament and how they imagine the upcoming country dance will compare to last winter’s royal ball. Sébastien is quiet in the way he often gets around groups of new people, but he seems content enough to watch and listen and smile his little smiles.
Nicolò brazenly teases Lady Quỳnh over the money she lost to him in the jousting final — and the money he expects she will lose to him tomorrow in the archery competition. Quỳnh’s features blaze with something for a moment at that last, but she goes quiet, and when next she speaks it’s to Nile, with an entirely new subject of conversation.
“I wonder, Sir Nile, if you would think it very forward of me to ask for the honor of your escort at the dance?”
She is very beautiful, Nile thinks, and she smiles with a devil-may-care zeal that’s very appealing. But Nile really did not prepare herself for flirtation, let alone this.
“Sir Nile would be delighted!” says Yusuf, clapping his hands as if the matter is settled. “Wouldn’t you?”
Nile knows that face. Go along, he said. It’ll be fun, he said. Coming from Yusuf — or Sébastien for that matter, though he’s not meeting her eyes just now — this is usually true. So she takes a deep breath and looks across the fire to Quỳnh.
“You honor me with your invitation, dear lady,” says Nile. “I will gladly accompany you.”
Now, she supposes, with her name on the leaderboard and the attentions of a great lady of the court, she is well and truly a knight.
As they bunk down later that evening, Yusuf says with great enthusiasm, “Our own Sir Nile with one of the most eligible ladies at the tournament on her arm! We will have to neaten up your father’s court costume to fit you, and ensure you are well-practiced at the art of dance. I am of course accomplished as both lead and follow, and Sébastien will offer his advice as well, yes?”
Sébastien grumbles something Nile doesn’t understand. There’s a strange look on his face as he curls into his jacket atop the straw, and Nile’s not so sure she likes the feeling it gives her.
But she is very sore, and her spare tunic across the straw is very soft, and she will leave tomorrow’s concerns for tomorrow.