Every Inch a Year
Title: Every Inch a Year
Fandom: Protector of the Small
Rating: G
Characters/pairings: Keladry of Mindelan, Nealan of Queenscove, Raoul of Goldenlake and Malorie’s Peak, Alanna of Pirate’s Swoop and Olau
Warnings (including spoilers): Spoilers for Lady Knight
Wordcount: 2,240 words
Author’s note: Written for thisisthemorning for yuletide, and filling the 'Grooming' box on my Make You Feel That Way bingo card.
Summary: Kel has faced down Blayce the Gallan, commanded squads of men twice her age, and ridden her fearsome gelding Peachblossom, all without flinching. Why, then, is she nervous about a simple afternoon at a festival?
~~~~~
Lady Knight Keladry of Mindelan clenched her teeth together to stop them from chattering as she wiped down her sweaty torso, neck, and face with a cold, wet cloth. As soon as she was clean, she dried herself off and hurried into her clothes, a neat, pale green cotton tunic and brown cotton leggings. Atop those, she wore a thick woolen jacket that was tailored to fit her wide shoulders and muscled arms.
Kel sat down on a narrow cot to put on her leather boots. The tent she was provided as a full knight of Tortall at the King’s Midwinter festival was adequate for the weather, but tiny, and it was a struggle to turn around enough to rummage through her packs without knocking anything over. When she could finally sit back down, Kel examined her face in a small mirror, and sighed.
The mirror was attached to a small kit of face paints, meant to be tucked into luggage for trips. It was an unusually perceptive gift from one of Kel’s sisters, Adalia, for Kel’s last birthday, and Kel was trying to decide whether she should use it.
The mirror showed her a young woman with pale gray eyes, brown hair cut trim around the base of her skull, and a completely blank expression. It was the face Kel was known for, the one that had gained her the title ‘Yamani lump’ during her page training, and was a sign that the glaive exercises she had just finished had not been enough to banish the anxiety she had been feeling since rising at dawn.
A few minutes later, Kel’s spirits had sunk even lower, as the cold, wet cloth was applied again; this time, to her face, in an attempt to redress the abuses she had performed with the face paints.
It was, of course, at that moment that Kel heard a clucking sound from the entrance of the tent.
“What cruel god has cursed you, my friend?” cried Sir Nealan of Queenscove, Kel’s longtime friend and eternal annoyance. “Or have to chosen to take up a career as a jester?”
“I don’t have to wear these very often up North,” Kel grumbled. She made room for Neal to sit beside her on the bed, smiling at him as he leaned into her shoulder for a moment. They had been together in Corus now for several days, but were still appreciating the opportunity to be close after nearly three years of contact only through letters and the occasional mage-call.
“Yes, yes, I hear all about the savagery and the uncouth Northerners, and I am very sympathetic,” Neal said consolingly. “Meanwhile, you may take comfort in the knowledge that I spend my time on a moderate beach, sampling various fishes and oceanic delicacies.”
“Are you going to help me, or give me more reason to plan pranks?” Kel asked, voice mild.
Neal sat up straight. “I am going to help you, because I am a wonderful friend and you are lucky to have me,” he announced grandly. Kel raised an eyebrow at him, which he duly ignored. “Let me see…” he muttered to himself as he finished cleaning off her face, took the paints from her unresisting hands, and began poking various implements at her. “Not too heavy, you’ve got lovely skin and eyes, you don’t need much. Maybe something for the lips,” he mused, and Kel blushed.
“I’m not trying to attract anyone’s eyes, Neal,” she chided. “I’m just…”
It was Neal’s turn to raise an eyebrow. “Just…?”
“Raoul’s introducing me to the Lioness,” Kel admitted. She looked away, embarrassed to have the reason for her nerves known, particularly when Neal’s former knight-master was certainly not a source of stress for him. Not in the same way, at least.
“I thought you’d met already?” Neal said with a frown, continuing with her paints.
“Yes,” Kel agreed, “but only briefly, and it was a few years ago, and she’s been far to the west of my position on the border.” Her fingers twisted in her lap; a sign of outwards emotion she only let out around her very closest friends.
“She’s not going to judge you on your looks, you know,” Neal told her, frown deepening.
“I know,” Kel insisted. “I don’t think that at all. But I want to make a good impression; Alanna manages to be a lady of the court as well as a knight, and I…” Kel gazed down at her stocky and well-muscled body. Without much difficulty, years of subtle and not-so-subtle taunts come to mind.
“Kel, she already adores you on principle, and respects what she’s heard of you. It’ll be fine,” Neal said with a brisk bluntness that made Kel feel better than all the sympathy in the world. “There, you’re done, if you’ve gotten all the ladies’ gossip out of you.
Kel jabbed him in the side and he stuck out his tongue. “Very mature,” she taunted. “I feel terrible for poor Roderick.”
Kel referred to Roderick of Meron, Neal’s first-year squire. It was unusual for a knight as green as Neal to take on a squire, but Roderick was a distant cousin, and the matriarch of Neal’s family had insisted that he take on the boy, whose Gift was not terribly dissimilar to Neal’s own. Among Neal’s friends, the general sentiment was of extreme amusement toward Neal, and strong sympathy for the respectable young man who’d been stuck to him.
“Feel worse,” Neal told her, his voice taking on a weary tone. “He’s tilting today, against Byron of Sule.”
“Listart of Fenrigh’s squire?” Kel clarified, surprised. Byron was a second-year squire, small for his age, but surely far more experienced at the sport than Roderick. When Neal nodded ruefully, Kel shook her head. “And he’s got you for a tilting instructor. Would he he like to have some of my bruise balm?”
Neal glared at her. Then, considering, he nodded.
~~~~~
Kel pulled her coat closer around herself and tried to duck into Raoul’s shadow. It was mid-December, but there was no frost on the ground, making things that much easier for the few knights and other fighters who were riding their horses across the tilting grounds at full speed, often falling upon the grounds soon thereafter. Safe in the bleachers, Kel could relax with the knowledge that she would not be exhibited at this festival.
Although there was a war going on at the Northern border, and had been for some time, King Jonathon would not call off the annual Midwinter showings of strength and skill at this small park near the capital. It was a popular event among the city’s inhabitants and the nearby peoples, and was a valuable training tool for the knights and soldiers of the country. Still, as most fighters were required to serve the Crown in the North, the event was smaller this year.
Kel and Raoul were in town on a month’s relief from the warfront, considering they had been stationed there for nearly three years straight. After visiting her family and friends in the city, performing the various legal, religious, and unofficial duties her family, station, and position required of her, it was a relief to take some time off on her vacation to watch Neal’s squire be trounced on the tilting field, and meet an old benefactor.
On Kel’s right side, opposite Raoul, sat Alanna the Lioness, copper hair glowing gently in the weak sunlight. Several inches shorter than Kel and slighter, there was no obvious reason why her presence should be causing so much distress, but Kel had to fight to keep her bearing light and easy, rather than slipping back into her expressionless mask.
When the three had met at the tilting field and made their way into the bleachers, Alanna had gifted Kel with a wide smile and a firm handshake, then proceeded to tease Raoul about the latest rumors about his and their friend Buri’s scandalous relationship. Such talk relaxed Kel, and when the conversation moved from the latest updates about Raoul’s and Alanna’s friends into the political intrigues of the past half-year, Kel was able to insert a few comments of her own, without, hopefully, appearing too stiff. Still, when Alanna looked straight into her eyes and asked after Kel’s last few years, Kel nearly choked on her own spit.
“What would you like to know?” she managed to say, sounding only slightly breathless, eyes locked on the unknown squires tilting clumsily before them.
“I’ve heard some good stories about what you got up to a few years back, but they’re all probably talked up,” Alanna said with a sly smile. “And I’ve heard a fair amount about what you’ve got up to since then, but that, I think, has been under-estimated.”
“When Wyldon speaks up in support of a new program, it must be something special,” Raoul said in agreement, subtly nudging Kel in the shoulder. She looked at him, hard, and he shrugged.
“Well then!” Alanna grinned. “Let’s hear it! And I don’t want a few sentences suited for a dinner party, I want the fact, gritty and gruesome as they may be.”
Hoping the redness of her cheeks could be explained by the chilly breeze, Kel began.
Raoul had heard the stories before, but he listened without interrupting as Kel recounted the first year of setting up a refugee camp called Haven and the various difficulties Kel and her friends had with running and protecting the camp. When story turned to the attack on Haven and Kel’s quest to rescue her refugees from Scanra, Alanna interrupted.
“Not that this isn’t interesting,” Alanna said sincerely, “but what I really want to hear about is more of the camps you set up.”
“The refugee camps?” Kel asked uncertainly. “Most people find them…”
“Shameful, boring, or some combination of the two?” Alanna said bluntly. Kel nodded. “Well I’m not most people. And I can pay any wandering minstrel to tell me how you slayed Blayce the Gallan. I don’t know much about commanding and managing civilians in wartime on a long-term basis-- not that I want to, mind-- but it’s playing a major part in this war and I’d like to understand it better. Particularly since you’ve received such accolades for your work.”
“I wouldn’t say that,” Kel murmured, looking back at the tilting fields in place of squirming.
“I would,” Raoul said, with humor.
“Soldiers training civilians, establishing fighting forces among the commoners, which reduces the need for the Crown’s forces to combat every incursion. And then, I’ve been told, this somehow helps you make some of the local lords stop their endless complaining about their conscription numbers? Tell me how you accomplish this impossible task!”
The sight of those bright purple eyes gazing up at her, wide and pleading, melted the last of Kel’s anxiety, and she laughed.
As she dove into her explanation, Kel discovered the she was truly enjoying herself. Not only was it rare for a fellow knight to take her experience with refugee camps seriously, but the fact that the Lioness herself was talking to Kel as an equal, asking insightful questions, and nodding along to the answers like she was learning something, filled Kel with warmth. The pair of women were deep in conversation when Raoul nudged Kel and pointed out that Roderick’s turn to tilt had arrived.
The bout lasted for one horrible charge, as the first-year squire was promptly unseated by his senior. To his credit, Roderick landed very well on the hard ground, and got up with no apparent injuries.
Alanna sighed. “And now, I have a foolish boy to taunt, and his squire to tutor. I wish I could stay longer,” she said to Kel. “I’ll look forward to speaking with you again, Lady Knight. Dunderhead,” she said cordially to Raoul.
“Shrew,” he replied with equal gravitas.
“Goodbye,” Kel said with a grin.
Alanna winked and made her way down from the bleachers, disappearing into the crowd.
Kel relaxed against Raoul’s shoulder, breathing deeply for what felt like the first time all day.
“You all right?” he asked. When Kel looked up, he was smirking at her.
“I’m fine,” she insisted, and the smirk gentled into a kind smile.
“I know what it’s like, meeting your heroes. For what it’s worth, I think she was impressed.”
“I’ll settle for not laughing,” Kel muttered.
“If the Lioness wants to laugh at you, you’ll find yourself thoroughly laughed at,” Raoul chides. “You’re a respected public figure now, Kel. The people who insulted you before, or laughed, they’re the ones chewing on their stale rhetoric now. You’ve made it!” he jostled her shoulder, winning a small smile. “Stop tiptoeing and walk tall.” After a moment’s contemplation, she casually said, “I think you should start with challenging Alanna to a bout.”
“What?!” Kel sat up straight, aghast.
“Give us all a show!” Raoul insisted. “The gods know we’re not getting much of one here,” he waved at the admittedly sparse field of competitors. “Not swords, though,” he warned. “Maybe… archery.”
Kel shook her head in amusement. Raoul raised his eyebrows and waited. Kel sighed. “Fine.”
She stood up and, with a last accusatory look at her former knight-master, made her way off the bleachers, following Alanna’s path through the crowd. A minute later, Kel remembered Raoul’s advice and pulled herself up a bit taller as she walked.
It felt good.
My Make You Feel That Way bingo card