What Makes a Knight
The one thing every knight had to have.
The reason a knight was called a knight at all.
A horse.
A horse was what it took for a knight to be a knight. A warhorse bred for battle and a ceremonial mount bred for rites were taught toward wholly different ends, by wholly different methods. Any knight worthy of the name was expected to keep at least those two, and the price of either was ruinous—far beyond what anyone but a noble would even dare to consider.
The Black Knights, however, rarely traveled in the saddle, and so they had simply forgotten.
Black unicorns lived in the Purple Forest.
Horns rose from the brows of those pitch-black horses, and their hooves were hard enough to need no shoes, shining like obsidian. The muscle under the hide was steel: they could spring as lightly as deer and strike as hard as leopards. From neck to back there was no mane at all, only scales, gleaming with the light of steel.
The heroine's the one who finds them. A whole herd.
Deep in the Purple Forest, a vast herd of black unicorns went bounding over rough ground like goats. Thirty or forty, just among the ones she had already found in the woods—enough, on their own, to mount a knightly order.
Hah. Beautiful.
Before she started choosing knights, she would have to secure these.
Are they even growing the wheat?
All sorts of useful plants grew in her garden plot, and wheat was one of them. The Purple Forest offered neither land to farm nor hours to farm it, so she had raised the grain only to keep the seed alive. The wheat found there grew a little shorter than ordinary wheat, but it yielded far more. Even on narrow fields, it would be enough to rotate the common kind with what the forest had given them.
Then why is the food like this?
Nothing but potatoes, plate after plate. She could not let her young master live on potatoes alone.
Nina knew Adrian's palate was as exacting as his face was fine. He was only enduring it.
There may be more out there than what the heroine found. I'll look.
She meant to turn the Purple Forest inside out and wring from it everything that could be wrung.
There's a mine, too, now that I think of it.
They would have to earn, and earn hard. Without money, what was the next step supposed to be?
People, as well.
Names passed through her mind in a long line: people still buried in obscurity who would be famous in the years to come.
I'll win over as many as I can.
From what she could see, neither the imperial house nor the Temple meant to stand with the ducal family. If that was so, then they needed power enough to remain standing, perfectly sound, without either of them.
Those cult bastards.
Nina ground her teeth, and grinned all the same. For her, the situation was not so bad.
I really didn't think we'd fall out with the Temple. In the original, they were on good terms.
In the original story, priests had given their lives to lay a barrier over the rift and offered the young master what comfort they could, and so the Duke of Rubuaene had been friendly toward the Temple.
Which is exactly why he takes a knife in the back at the end and the whole thing comes crashing down.
If the final boss was hiding inside the Temple, then it was better this way—better that they had soured on each other early.
The imperial family. Well. Once a duke grows strong enough, they'll come closer on their own.
Thinking so, she called them up one after another: Louis, Jin, and Kirill. She was glad, at least, to have fished companions she could trust out of all of this.
Nina yawned, small, and closed her eyes. She would only sort her thoughts a little. In a little while she would get up and go.
She was certain of it. The moment her eyes shut, she was asleep.
When she woke, she was in the young master's bed. The place beside her was empty.
Sheepish at having slept so late, Nina climbed down and returned to her own room.
Breakfast was potato pancakes and potato soup. Afterward she walked the castle.
She had come to the main castle only once, on the day she was first appointed to the Black Knights, and never since. Raised thick of black stone, it looked more like a fortress built for defense than a residence: a gate lifted on a drawbridge, and a moat besides. The attendants moving within its walls did not even number twenty.
"And every one of them a maid or a manservant. You aren't taking on any close retainers?"
Nina asked it while thinking that Louis, quill in hand, looked like a painting. He lifted his eyes from the papers.
"Because there is no one who meets His Grace the Duke's eye."
"Ah..."
The sound left her with a sigh.
"So he keeps no one near him. Even so, we'll need people all the same."
"I think so as well. It has been nearly two years since the stagnant water was drawn off. It is time we let fresh water in."
At that, a new light came into Nina's golden eyes.
"Vice-Captain—no. Sir Louis, do you have candidates in mind?"
The title of steward refused to settle on her tongue. Besides, the vice-captain still felt, stubbornly, like Sir Louis.
Louis did not correct her. He let the address pass, gentle as ever.
"I do."
"Then please tell me, Sir Louis."
She dragged a stool over and dropped onto it. Louis smiled faintly and set down his pen.
"The Imperial Academy is flourishing. It is not only the empire. From the kingdoms as well, students are lining up to enroll."
"Oh, I've heard of it. Fourteen towers, twenty-two bridges, a river of wisdom?"
Louis nodded.
"They call it the city of towers, or the city of canals. The difficulty lies with the recommendation letter."
"Why is a recommendation letter a problem?"
"In the empire, a person without one cannot find work. And there are those for whom the Academy will not write a letter at all. People without a title. Nobles from weak houses. Foreigners."
"Then what happens to them?"
"It becomes nearly impossible to obtain employment anywhere. Or they are left with unlawful work, or with work that pays very little."
"So those are the people you're after, Sir Louis."
"Yes. Should the ducal house announce that it will receive those without recommendation letters, it may become a question of prestige..."
"Our young master doesn't care about things like that."
"The only question is how one is to trust the ability of a person who has no letter."
"And you have candidates?"
"I do. However."
Louis stopped and looked at her. Nina caught what he was not saying, and smiled.
"I'll look into them. I'll speak to the young master."
"Thank you."
He took up his pen again, and added, "Now that Lady Nina has returned, it feels at last as though things are turning again."
Nina grinned at him. "I'm everybody's Nina."
Louis laughed.
As the sound left him, he thought that it had truly been a very long time since he had laughed without a worry in him.
She went to the kitchen and, with a silver tongue, talked the cook on duty into surrendering the hearth. The cook watched with open interest as a potato omelet took shape under her hands.
Nina slid the steaming omelet onto a plate, chilled a tea with her spirit's power, and went to find Adrian. He had only half-eaten his breakfast, if that, so the omelet would be his brunch.
She set the tray down with a solid thunk in front of him where he worked in the study, and Adrian smiled, faint and brief.
It had been a truly long time since he had eaten anything she made. On an ordinary day he would have paid it no mind and taken the food once it had gone cold. Today he picked up fork and knife as they were meant to be held.
The omelet was still hot, and it was simply delicious.
Potato, onion, egg, olive oil.
Plain things, set together. Rough, and honest. He cleared the plate and drank the cold tea at his leisure before he asked.
"So?"
"I was talking with Sir Louis, and..."
Adrian nodded before she could finish.
"Do whatever you like."
"How do you know what I was going to say?"
"I told you I trust you."
He studied her face, then went on. "You said you spoke with Louis. About retainers, I imagine. Call people in and talk to them, or do whatever else you mean to do. Whichever is easier."
"You already knew, and you still didn't do it?"
"There was no need."
The speed and the coldness with which he had put down the infighting had been for one reason alone: to protect Jin and Louis. Someday—if someday he met Nina again—she would want to know whether they were well. Had it been Adrian alone in that council chamber, he would have killed every one of them.
Hypotheticals like that are useless.
He thought so, looking at the Nina before his eyes. Silver hair falling long in two loose streams—a life in which she never appeared was a thing he could hardly imagine.
Nina shook her head.
"I knew it. But I want to feed my young master delicious things, and dress him in good clothes. So from now on, we have to work."
She set both hands on her hips with a decisive little thump. Adrian looked at her and nodded.
He was of the same mind.
"So do as you like."