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From:

sixthlight

Nicolò got to deliver his report to Godfrey but no chance to argue the outcome, and then the next day Godfrey was called to deliver a judgement half a day’s journey from Genoa, which meant he would be gone two days. Nicolò saw Noor and Yasmin walking around the main garden with some of the other ladies of the court, nobody speaking to them, still looking terribly bored.

“Why are we not organising hawking, or some other expedition?” he asked Marco. “It is as if we are all trapped in the palace, or at least the city.”

“We’ve had word there might be raiders nearby,” Marco told him. “Pirates.”

“Attacking the city itself, or the lands nearby? That would be ridiculous. I tell you, we know something of pirates in Malta, and they go after easy prey.” Well, not all of them, but Nicolò had no reason to believe Andromache or Quỳnh would come this far north, and he was reasonably certain they would not attack Genoese ships – let alone the city – while he was visiting there.

Reasonably.

“I don’t know the details.” Marco shrugged. “If you ask me we need to make an example of some of them.”

“Because that works so well,” Nicolò retorted, thinking of – certain events of their youth.

“Are you going to go on about those boys, again –”

“I didn’t say anything about them, so surely they are on your conscience.”

Marco swore. “Sometimes you are a pious prig, Nicolò, and I wish our father had let you go to that monastery.”

“I don’t, anymore,” Nicolò said. “I don’t think I’m made for the monastic life.”

“I suppose there’s hardly a monastic life in Malta – aren’t most of them still Muslims?”

“Not quite all, but yes.”

“I suppose that is why you are getting on so well with our guests.”

“They are easy to get on with, Marco.” Nicolò shrugged. “You need to try harder, that is all.”

He wondered what Yusuf was doing to entertain himself, with the negotiations halted, and found him in the same garden he had seen the ladies in, drawing in a small codex made of scraps of paper bound together. Paper was terribly expensive in Genoa; it was one of the things the Fatimids had to trade that Nicolò thought was most valuable, though he did not know if Godfrey felt the same.

“Can I ask what you are drawing?”

“The garden,” Yusuf said. “It keeps my mind quiet, when I have nothing else to do but wait, and I am out of prayers.”

“A useful habit,” Nicolò said, sitting beside him. “How does Godfrey feel about it? I realise I do not know. He is so much older than me that I have never had much cause to ask him such things.”

“Neither have I,” Yusuf said, “or rather, he has not offered.” His lips quirked. “Remember, we cannot speak without a translator, or without a great deal of patience on his part.”

“He can be patient when he chooses.”

“Can he,” Yusuf said, and Nicolò realised that had perhaps not been politic.

“Tell me,” he said, to cover it, “what would you do, if you had any choice in the world right now? Would you be an artist? Would you go…where would you go?”

“Tell me first,” Yusuf returned, “what you would do, under that condition, Nicolò of Genoa but also of Malta.”

“I’d go,” Nicolò said, at once. “Back to Malta, and stay there, and never come to Genoa again.” He shrugged. “I like it there. I have – companions.”

“Beloved ones, perhaps?” Yusuf was smiling, but it was not a smirk; it was a genuine inquiry.

“Yes, but not as perhaps you mean that.” Nicolò thought about how one could say I have not yet been required to marry for my family and I have not met anyone I would wed for myself, and casual company is not love, but it felt…not quite like the right thing to say, to a man who was almost certainly going to marry his brother.

“Well, that was an easy answer,” said Yusuf. “I would take my sisters somewhere – somewhere we could all choose our fates. I would not mind so much if I had, if we all had, duties to undertake. People we were responsible to, or for. Instead we have…obligations. Which are not the same thing.”

“Oh, that I understand,” Nicolò told him. “I think I felt the same. Before Malta.”

He met Yusuf’s eyes for a second, in a moment of perfect understanding, and also of noticing how fine and deep Yusuf’s eyes were, how easy to look into.

Yusuf looked away first, and Nicolò found himself flushing, and not sure – no; it was not helpful to lie to himself; he knew why.

“I am interrupting you,” he said, standing. “I should go. I…have to confer with the captain of my ship; we were not expecting to be this long in Genoa.”

“No,” Yusuf said, at once, and then coughed. “That is, of course, I would not keep you from your duties.”

“Come with me,” Nicolò said, before he could think better of it. “Genoa is a great port; if you are going to marry here, you should know what matters most to us. Which is our trade, and the sea.”

Yusuf looked like he changed his mind about what to say before he spoke; Nicolò wondered what he might have said. “Is that…allowed?”

Nicolò raised his eyebrows. “You are a guest here, are you not?”

“Just so,” Yusuf agreed, standing as well. “Then…I will.”

Nicolò was half-expecting someone to stop them as they left, but nobody did. Yusuf asked him very sensible questions about the city, some of which he could answer and some of which he could not. He had spent most of his life, he said when Nicolò asked, in al-Fustat, which was inland. His first sea voyage had been the trip to Genoa.

Nicolò was proud of his ship, insomuch as it was his, but it was not sizeable compared to the ships that had brought Yusuf’s party here; still, that was not what it was built for.

“We are very fast, at sea,” he told Yusuf, as they approached.

“Your rigging is different,’ Yusuf said; he had an observant eye, Nicolò had already seen. “More like that on our ships. The ones that brought us here, I mean.”

“Well, we sail out of Malta,” said Nicolò. “It is simple; sails are expensive and require skill to make, so it is easier to use what is made locally.”

He introduced Yusuf to Sébastien, and they liked each other at once, which pleased Nicolò for some reason he could not name. Sébastien insisted on explaining the ship to Yusuf and telling him all sorts of things about how she sailed. It was not really what Nicolò had come here for but Yusuf looked so much more at ease than he had been at any moment in the palace, that Nicolò could not bring himself to interrupt it.

Sébastien did pull him aside for a moment, when Yusuf was squinting up at the rigging. He spoke rapidly and in his own Provençal, which Nicolò did not speak but understood more or less. “Andromache is here; she will be at the tavern by the east dock, this evening. She wishes to speak with you, if it is possible.”

“Andromache is – why?”

Sébastien shrugged. “Has anybody ever dictated her business but her? Or Quỳnh, of course.”

“I will try and be there,” Nicolò said, and then Yusuf re-joined them.

“Seven days to Sicily – truly?” he asked of Sébastien.

“With good weather,” Sébastien admitted, “but truly.”

“We could be in Malta in almost the same length of time,” Nicolò added, “if we left now.”

“Not quite now, the tide is wrong,” Sébastien reminded him. “In another hour.”

“Don’t let me stop you,” Yusuf joked, leaning on the railing and looking out to sea. He was smiling, but his eyes weren’t.

“What do you say? We could ransom him,” Sébastien said, getting in on it.

“His sisters are still here,” Nicolò said. He hated to break the mood, but it was, if anything, too tempting a suggestion.

“You wouldn’t get a ransom for me anyway,” Yusuf said, straightening. “So we might as well stay.” He turned to Nicolò. “Does your brother ever sail anywhere?”

“No,” Nicolò said. “He hasn’t left Genoa in the last ten years, not to speak of.”

“Ah, I see,” Yusuf said. Nicolò cursed himself, for telling the truth.

*

It was not difficult, when Nicolò entered the tavern that evening, to spot Andromache. He thought, when he did, that if Godfrey or perhaps Marco were here, they would say she was a woman dressed as a man. Which was the strangest of thoughts, because to Nicolò’s eyes, she was Andromache, dressed as herself. There were at least two men on her crew who had voices as high as hers and a similar lack of beards, but were men nonetheless; she didn’t dress any differently from them, she just…wasn’t a man. Nicolò could not say why exactly. It had never occurred to him to think about it in Malta, but in Genoa, it did.

“I had not thought to see you here,” he greeted her, sitting down across from her. “But Sébastien tells me you wished to speak.”

“I’ve been here before, you know,” she said. “There’s just better ports on this sea. Almost any of them.”

“Say that a little louder, if you want to spend the evening brawling.”

“Tempting, but no.”

“In all seriousness, Andromache. Why are you here?”

“We had business in the area,” she said, leaning one elbow on the table. “Your brother doesn’t have your morals, Nicolò.”

“Which brother? I have six.” Andromache only cocked an eyebrow at this. “No, he does not.”

Not an admission he wanted to make in public, or at all, but everybody around them was speaking Ligurian, or Latin; it was safe enough. He did not know exactly what Andromache referred to, but he knew she and Quỳnh had a particular distaste for any ships that carried human cargo, as a matter of principle. And it was one of the trades that particularly took Genoese merchants to Egyptian and Levantine ports. This alliance, in fact, would likely continue that, or strengthen it.

They didn’t sail through Malta, these days. The waters around it had become too perilous. Every time Nicolò came back he expected Godfrey to raise that; every time he had not. It was a waiting game.

“I have heard from Marco,” Nicolò went on, “that there is word of raiders in the vicinity. Bold ones, to come so close to Genoa itself. You should be cautious.”

“I’m always cautious, Nicolò,” Andromache said. “But thank you for the warning.” She gave him a serious look. “Will you be coming home soon?”

“As soon as I can, believe me,” Nicolò said. They exchanged an embrace and kisses on the cheek before he left.

He needed to go back, he thought, as he made his way back to the palace. He had managed to deceive himself about what a bitter taste Genoa left on his tongue these days until he had seen Andromache, but seeing her reminded him of what he had in Malta. This wasn’t his home anymore.

From: (Anonymous)

the diplomatic webs!! the scheming, the drama of it all, its all amazing.

I know you can stop writing all these AUs whenever you want, and you dont have a problem, but i'd be remiss if we didnt check in to make sure youre really alright, I love them all tho theyre so much fun and i love your writing <3<3<3 Andy showing up and being her hot mysterious self *swoons*

love this fill <3<3<33<3<3<3<3<3<3