The Turkey Leg Girl's Summer

• Chapter 1 Grease, Garb, and Gilded Armor
• Chapter 2 The Tips Arcana
• Chapter 3 A Proposal Fit for a King
• Chapter 4 Rules of the Fake Romance
• Chapter 5 Playing to the Audience
• Chapter 6 Midsummer Heatwave
• Chapter 7 Spilled Ale and Smoldering Looks
• Chapter 8 Jousting in the Dust
• Chapter 9 Under the Smokehouse Tent
• Chapter 10 The Queen's Favor
• Chapter 11 Flirting for Pennies
• Chapter 12 Off-Duty at the Mud Pit
• Chapter 13 Tangled Ribbons
• Chapter 14 Behind the Tournament Arena
• Chapter 15 Blurring the Script
• Chapter 16 A Squire's Secret
• Chapter 17 The Royal Feast
• Chapter 18 Cracks in the Armor
• Chapter 19 Rain on the Fairegrounds
• Chapter 20 Unscripted Heat
• Chapter 21 The Broken Lance
• Chapter 22 When the Tips Run Dry
• Chapter 23 Packing Up the Caravans
• Chapter 24 The Final Joust
• Chapter 25 Stripping the Garb
• Chapter 26 Huzzah for the Real Thing

The temperature inside the smokehouse booth had already breached ninety degrees by nine in the morning, and the gates weren't even open yet. Maeve adjusted the laced front of her bodice, feeling the damp Linen cling uncomfortably to her spine. Her upper arms were dusted with a flour-and-cornstarch mixture meant to absorb sweat, but by noon, it always turned into a thin paste. She reached into the stainless-steel commercial smoker with a pair of long, heavy-duty tongs and lifted a forty-pound rack of turkey legs, grease sizzling as it dripped onto the glowing hickory embers below.

"Huzzah, sister! Art thou ready to feed the peasantry?"

Maeve didn't need to turn around to know who was standing at the side flap of the tent. Christopher, the primary pitmaster and her boss for the six-week run of the Maryland Renaissance Festival, was adjusting his felt flat-cap with a grin that was entirely too bright for the humidity. He smelled of applewood smoke, stale cider, and the cheap peppermint soap they used in the crew washrooms.

"If the peasantry wants to pay fourteen dollars a pop for glorified bird limbs, I am ready to hand them over," Maeve said, sliding the meat onto the metal holding tray. "The front counter register is jammed again, by the way. It’s sticking on the change drawer."

"Hit it on the left side with the wooden mallet," Christopher said blithely, ducking under the canvas to check the thermometer on the secondary smoker. "The one we use for the butter tubs. Works every time. It’s part of the ancient lore."

Maeve wiped her hands on her heavy burlap apron, which was already stained with hickory tar and old salt. She had taken this gig because the pay was cash at the end of every weekend, and after her junior year of college left her bank account thoroughly drained, six weeks of sweating over a pit seemed like a fair trade. What she hadn't accounted for was the sheer volume of dust, the blinding heat, and the fact that by the third weekend, her hands permanently smelled like cured poultry no matter how many times she scrubbed them with lemon juice.

Outside the booth, the festival grounds were slowly coming to life. The sound of lute tuning wafted from the pub down the dirt path, mixed with the sharp thwack of wooden practice swords being hammered against leather shields over by the jousting arena. The dirt lanes, currently being sprayed down by a vintage water truck to keep the dust from choking the early arrivals, carried a very specific scent: crushed pine needles, horse manure, kettle corn, and fried dough.

Maeve leaned against the wooden counter of the stall, watching the morning parade of performers and vendors head to their stations. There were belly dancers wrapped in wool cloaks to keep the chill off their stomachs until the sun hit its peak, glassblowers dragging carts of quartz and coal, and knights in mismatched velvet surcoats holding cardboard cups of gas-station coffee.

Then came the jousting crew.

They walked in a pack, five or six young men looking thoroughly exhausted, carrying heavy wooden lances, bundles of padded chainmail, and iron greaves that clanked rhythmically with every step. At the center of the cluster was Will, a squire who had spent the last two weekends making Maeve’s job marginally more entertaining and significantly more frustrating.

Will was currently shirtless beneath a pair of dark wool breeches, a thick leather arm-guard buckled over his left forearm. His hair, dark and damp from an early morning horse-grooming session, stuck out in chaotic curls around his forehead. He was carrying two heavy steel breastplates—one tucked under each arm like a pair of oversized, gleaming serving platters—and talking animatedly to one of the full-fledged knights.

"I’m telling you, Sir Reginald’s left stirrup is rotted through," Will was saying, his voice carrying clearly over the ambient din of the grounds. "If he takes a full impact from Garrett today, he’s going into the dirt, and I’m the one who has to haul him out while the noble court pretends it’s part of the show."

"Let him fall," the knight muttered back. "Builds character. Makes the peasants cheer louder."

Will paused as he passed the smokehouse, catching Maeve’s eye. A lazy, familiar smirk spread across his face, dimpling his left cheek in a way that Maeve had mentally warned herself about at least forty times since opening weekend.

"Good morrow, fair maiden of the bird thighs," Will called out, stopping at the edge of her counter. He set the two breastplates down on the wooden barrel used for trash, letting out a heavy sigh of relief. "Doth thy grease run pure today?"

"My grease runs at roughly three hundred degrees, Will," Maeve replied, leaning her forearms on the counter. "If you touch that trash barrel again, I’m dumping a ladle of hot brine down your tunic."

"A harsh mistress," Will declared, addressing a family of early-bird patrons who were standing fifty yards away near the archery range, looking bewildered. "Yet her fowl is sweet, and her tongue sharper than a stainless-steel dagger."

"It’s a fourteen-inch boning knife, actually," Maeve said, picking up the tool in question and giving it a small, practiced flick toward the wooden cutting board. "And I know how to use it. Don't you have horses to scrape?"

"I have three warhorses to brush, four sets of armor to oil, and a chief jouster who currently has a hangover so severe he’s trying to wear his helmet backward," Will said, leaning his hip against the counter frame. He reached out with two fingers and plucked a small piece of crackling off the corner of the prep board before Maeve could slap his hand away. "Gods, that’s good. You’re an artist, Maeve. A greasy, smoke-stained artist."

"Get out of here, squire. You're contaminating the sanitary field."

"Sanitary field?" Will laughed, popping the salty skin into his mouth. "Maeve, we are standing in a pine forest built in 1984 where everyone is wearing linen that hasn't seen a washing machine since August. There is no sanitation here. Only glory. And tips."

He winked, picked up the iron breastplates with a grunt of effort, and ducked around the corner of the wooden fence toward the staging arena behind the arena stands.

Maeve shook her head, though she couldn't completely suppress the slight tug at the corner of her mouth. She grabbed a clean rag, dipped it in bleach water, and began wiping down the outer ledger where the customers would soon be leaning.

The truth was, the tips had been terrible. The first weekend had been a wash due to a sudden cold shower that turned the main lane into a swamp, and the second weekend had yielded barely enough extra cash to cover her gas money back to her apartment off-site. The festival circuit was brutal like that. If the crowd wasn't in a jovial, theatrical mood, they didn't tip the vendors; they treated the food stalls like a highway rest stop, dropping exact change and moving on to watch the jugglers.

"All right, ears up!" Christopher shouted from the back, banging a copper pot with a wooden spoon. "Gates are opening! Remember the script: extra 'huzzahs' for the kids, offer extra napkins to the men with big beards, and if anyone asks if it's real turkey, tell them it's dragon leg!"

The loud, resounding boom of the cannon echoed from the front entrance, signalling the official start of the day’s festivities. Within ten minutes, the quiet dirt paths were flooded with thousands of tourists. There were suburban fathers in floral shirts holding wooden broadswords, toddlers dressed as tiny fairies, and die-hard enthusiasts in fifty-pound hand-stitched leather armor that made them sweat through their surcoats before ten-thirty.

Maeve fell into the rhythm of the work automatically. Grab a paper boat, use the tongs to pull a steaming, dark-brown drumstick from the holding oven, wrap the bone in a thick square of foil so the customer wouldn't burn their fingers, hand it over, yell "Huzzah!", and slide the bill into the jar.

"Huzzah!" she yelled for a man in a polo shirt who looked deeply embarrassed by the entire interaction.

"Huzzah," he muttered back, taking his giant piece of meat and scurrying toward his wife.

By noon, the sun was directly overhead, beating down through the thin canopy of oak leaves. The smokehouse was a furnace. Maeve’s linen shirt was soaked through at the chest and back, and the dust lifted by thousands of marching boots settled into a fine film over her cheeks and neck. Every three minutes she had to wipe her forehead with the back of her arm to keep the salt from stinging her eyes.

"Maeve!" Christopher yelled over the roar of the exhaust fan. "We’re running low on the five-pound boats! Run back to the supply depot behind the jousting barn and grab two cases!"

"On it," Maeve said, thoroughly relieved to get out from behind the fires for five minutes.

She unbuckled her front apron, tossed it onto a clean milk crate, and ducked out the back flap of the tent into the shaded, restricted alleyway that ran behind the booths. The contrast was instant—without the heat of the smokers, the nineties heat felt almost tolerable.

She walked quickly down the narrow path, navigating around stacked kegs of mead, piles of hay bales, and performers taking brief, unglamorous breaks out of character. A woman in a elaborate Venetian gown was sitting on an overturned bucket, drinking an iced coffee through a straw while scrolling on her phone, her giant hoop skirt pulled up around her knees to expose black combat boots.

Maeve cut through the gap behind the royal court bleachers and entered the staging area behind the jousting arena. Here, the smell of woodsmoke was replaced by the pungent, heavy aroma of horse manure, crushed alfalfa, and leather oil.

The jousters were gearing up for the one o'clock show. Squires were running back and forth with buckets of water, double-checking saddle girths, and hauling lances from the drying racks.

In the middle of the chaos stood Will, looking entirely harassed.

He was currently trying to hoist a massive, shiny steel pauldrons onto the shoulder of Sir Garrett—a broad-shouldered actor with a majestic gray beard who was currently complaining loudly about his knee.

"I’m telling you, the fluid is building up again," Sir Garrett bellowed, holding a leather strap in his teeth while Will tugged at the leather lace behind his armpit. "If I have to take a hit from a lance today, I’m dropping like a sack of turnips."

"You're not dropping, Garrett," Will grunted, his feet braced against the red dirt as he pulled the knot tight. "You’re winning this round. The script says you take the green knight’s crest off in the second pass."

"My knee doesn't give a damn about the script, boy!"

"Hold still or I'm going to pinch your neck skin in the rivet," Will threatened, his forehead glistening with sweat. His dark shirt was completely soaked, stuck to his shoulders and ribs, showing the sharp line of his spine as he heaved against the armor.

Maeve paused for a second near the wooden fence, watching him work. There was an athletic, unstudied efficiency to his movements that she hadn't noticed when he was just leaning against her counter eating stolen chicken skin. He knew exactly which strap took the weight, which buckle needed to be left loose for movement, and how to talk down a dramatic middle-aged actor who was three minutes away from a heat-induced tantrum.

Will pulled the final knot, slapped the heavy steel shoulder plate with his palm, and stepped back, wiping his brow with his sleeve. As he turned around to grab a helmet from the bench, he spotted Maeve.

"Looking for a job upgrade, bird girl?" he called out, giving her a lopsided, exhausted smile. "We pay fifty cents more an hour, but you have to smell like horse instead of hickory."

"I’ll stick to the dead animals, thanks," Maeve said, walking over toward the wooden supply shack tucked against the back of the arena wall. "I'm just here for cardboard boats."

"The cardboard ones are in the back left," Will said, following her over toward the shed to grab a leather bucket of water. "Under the extra saddle blankets. Watch out for the wasps; they built a nest in the roof beam near the hinges."

"Appreciate the warning," she said, squinting into the dark interior of the shed.

The cooler air inside the shack smelled of cedar and old rope. Maeve found the boxes stacked high against the rear pine wall, precisely where Will had said they would be. She grabbed two heavy corrugated boxes, ducking under a low beam, and turned back toward the sunlight.

When she came out, Will was standing near the door, slumping against a wooden pillar as if his legs had briefly decided to give up on supporting him. He had his eyes closed, his chest rising and falling in heavy, deliberate breaths.

"You look like you're about to pass out," Maeve said, stopping with the heavy boxes cradled in her arms.

"I'm not passing out," Will said without opening his eyes. "I’m engaging in a deep tactical meditation."

"Right. Tactical heatstroke."

He opened one dark eye, looking down at her. "I’ve had two bottles of water today, Maeve. I am a picture of medieval health."

"Your skin is flushed and you’re leaning on a barn pillar like it’s the only thing keeping you on the planet." Maeve set the top box down on a fence post. She reached into her pocket, pulled out a small, foil-wrapped packet of electrolyte powder she always kept in her apron, and tossed it to him. "Put that in your next bucket."

Will caught it easily, his fingers curling around the packet. He looked down at the bright blue foil, then back up at her, his expression softening into something surprisingly genuine for a second.

"Thanks," he said softly. "I'll use it after this run. The queen’s court is coming to watch this heat, which means we have to do the full dramatic armor display."

"Is the tip jar at the joust any better than ours?" Maeve asked, leaning against the fence for a brief breath of fresh air before heading back to the hell-pit.

Will let out a short, dry laugh. "The tips at the joust go to the full knights, Maeve. The squires get a percentage of the general bucket at the gate, which currently amounts to about nine dollars and a brass button."

"Wonderful. We made twelve dollars in our jar by noon, and six of that was in quarters from a guy who lost a bet on the ring-toss."

"It’s the heat," Will said, leaning his head back against the wood. "Nobody wants to pull out their wallet when their fingers are swollen and their clothes are stuck to their thighs. They just want to drink cider, look at the horses, and leave."

"We need a better angle," Maeve mused, lifting the second box back into her arms. "Some kind of show. The guy who sells the wooden swords made a hundred bucks in tips yesterday just by pretending to fight the toddlers and letting them win."

"I could let a toddler hit me with a wooden sword," Will said thoughtfully. "Though Garrett would probably complain that it took away from his scene."

"Think about it," Maeve said, stepping past him into the red dirt path. "We're losing money out here while the jugglers are taking home stacks of twenty-dollar bills."

Will watched her as she started walking back toward the main artery of the fairgrounds, a slow, thoughtful expression creeping back onto his face. "I'll give it some thought, bird girl. See you at the six o'clock shutdown."

"Don't die of heat stroke, squire," she called back over her shoulder. "I need someone to mock tomorrow morning."

Maeve hauled the heavy boxes back to the smokehouse, ducking back under the canvas into the blast-furnace heat. She slammed the boxes onto the lower shelf under the register, grabbed her apron, and tied it securely around her waist.

"Took you long enough," Christopher grunted, using a massive iron shovel to scoop fresh coals into the bottom chamber of the main smoker. "Line’s fifty deep out front. Get the lances ready."

"They're turkey legs, Chris," Maeve said, picking up her tongs. "Not lances."

"Whatever they are, they’re fourteen bucks a piece," he yelled back over the sound of the crowds outside. "Let’s feed the mob!"

Maeve stepped up to the window, grabbed a dark, glistening turkey drumstick, wrapped the end in foil, and looked out at the sea of hot, tired faces waiting in the dust. The summer was just getting started, the heat was only going to get worse, and her pockets were entirely too light. She took a deep breath of smoke-thick air, put on her best theatrical smile, and held the meat high above her head.

"Huzzah!" she shouted into the glare of the noon sun. "Who amongst thee is brave enough to tackle the dragon!"

The crowd groaned, a few people pulled out their wallets, and the long, hot afternoon grind grumbled on.

The six o’clock cannon fired with a distant, hollow boom that felt more like a physical vibration in Maeve’s teeth than an actual sound. Instantly, the energy on the fairegrounds shifted. The frantic, dusty bustle of the day didn’t stop, but it bled into a weary, collective sigh. The tourists began their slow, dragging migration toward the exit gates, clutching plastic cups of melted Italian ice, wooden swords, and overpriced flower crowns. Behind the counters of the food booths, the transition was much faster. The theatrical smiles vanished, the grand middle-English accents dropped, and the desperate scramble to clean grease-slicked stainless steel began.

Maeve collapsed onto an empty plastic milk crate in the back corner of the smokehouse tent, her knees aching from seven straight hours on the hard-packed dirt floor. Her shoulders felt like they had been molded from hot lead, and her linen shift was so stiff with dried salt and hickory condensation that it practically stood up on its own. She dragged her fingers through her hair, wincing as she detangled a knot that had been thoroughly glued together by a mixture of powdered sugar from the funnel cake stand next door and aerosolized turkey grease.

"Count’s done," Christopher said, tossing a heavy green canvas bank bag onto the prep table. It landed with a dull, thoroughly disappointing thud. He slid a hand over his bald head, leaving a streak of black soot across his scalp that made him look like a weary coal miner. "We did numbers today, Maeve. Real numbers. The registers are healthy. The owner in the front office is going to be very pleased with us."

"And the tip jar?" Maeve asked, not even bothering to lift her head from her hands.

Christopher reached into the front apron pocket of his breeches and pulled out a handful of crumpled bills and loose change. He sorted them on the stainless-steel table with the practiced, cynical speed of a blackjack dealer. "Thirty-two dollars. And a coupon for a free oil change in Towson that expired in November of last year." He split the cash down the middle, sliding sixteen dollars across the metal surface toward her. "Don't spend it all on mead, sister. You’ve got to make that stretch until tomorrow afternoon."

Maeve stared at the small pile of paper. A five, two singles, and a smattering of greasy quarters. "Sixteen dollars," she muttered, her voice flat. "For nine hours of inhaling woodsmoke and yelling at people in cargo shorts. That’s less than two dollars an hour in tips, Chris. The girls at the pickle cart are pulling in fifty bucks a shift just by telling men they’re brave for eating a kosher dill."

"The pickle girls have a gimmick, Maeve. They walk around in pairs wearing matching green corsets and calling people 'sir' in a way that makes the local IT managers feel like they’re in a fantasy novel," Christopher said, already dragging a heavy plastic trash liner out of the back bin. "We sell forty-ounce pieces of charred bird. There is no mystery to a turkey leg. There is no romance in grease. People buy it because they’re starving, they eat it, they get their hands dirty, and they want to get away from us as fast as possible so they can find a wet wipe."

"There has to be a way to game the system," Maeve said, sliding her meager earnings into the small canvas pouch she kept hidden beneath her skirt. "The faire is an ecosystem of tips. The jugglers do it with performance. The mud beggars do it by being disgusting. Even the guys at the crossbow range get extra cash just by whispering tips about 'wind velocity' into some guy’s ear while his girlfriend watches."

"Well, if you figure out the great culinary alchemy of the faire, let me know," Christopher grunted, lifting the trash bag with a wet, heavy slosh. "Until then, scrub down the warming drawers. If there’s any grease left on the seals, the raccoons will tear the canvas side-panels open again tonight looking for the scraps."

Maeve spent the next forty-five minutes on her knees with a green scrub pad and a bucket of grey, lukewarm bleach water. By the time she crawled out from under the counter, the twilight had settled over the forest. The grand oaks that shaded the paths during the day now cast long, eerie shadows over the empty lanes. The colored flags hanging from the mock-Tudor storefronts drooped in the stagnant, humid air, and the only sound left was the distant, rhythmic clanking of the cleanup crews and the occasional whinny of a tired horse from the stables near the jousting arena.

She didn't want to go back to her off-site apartment yet. The drive was forty minutes of bumper-to-bumper traffic on Route 1, and her small bedroom under the eaves of an old farmhouse had no air conditioning—only a box fan that buzzed like a hornet and mostly just circulated the smell of hot shingles. Instead, she wandered down the darkened path toward the privy behind the jousting stands, hoping to wash the worst of the soot off her face before the water pressure in the crew sinks dropped to a trickle.

The back of the tournament arena was lit by a single floodlight mounted on a wooden telephone pole. Under its yellow glare, the red clay of the practice ring looked like the surface of Mars. A small crowd of off-duty performers had gathered around the horse troughs—mostly squires, a couple of archery marshals, and two of the guys who ran the giant wooden catapult.

Will was there, sitting on the top rail of the paddock fence with a bottle of cheap, lukewarm beer dangling from his fingers. He had changed out of his damp wool breeches into a pair of frayed denim shorts and a faded black t-shirt that had the sleeves cut off at the shoulders, exposing the pale skin of his upper arms and a smattering of freckles that looked almost black under the artificial light. He looked incredibly young without his armor and leather gear, his damp curls sticking up in wild spikes where his helmet had pressed them flat.

"Look who survived the smokehouse," Will called out as Maeve approached, raising his bottle in a mock toast. "The keeper of the flame herself. Did you bring any leftovers, or did you leave them all for the forest rats?"

"If I see another piece of turkey in the next twelve hours, I’m going to throw up," Maeve said, leaning her shoulder against the fence post. She felt the cool wood press through her damp shirt, a small mercy against her hot skin. "And for your information, the forest rats have better manners than the tourists we had today. A guy tried to pay me with a handful of silver-painted plastic coins he won at the dart game."

The other squires laughed, a low, tired chorus of agreement. One of them, a lanky kid named Toby who spent his days running fresh lances to the knights, was currently sitting on an upturned feed bucket, using a pocketknife to scrape dried mud off the heels of his leather boots.

"Tips were trash everywhere today," Toby said, shaking his head. "The knights took seventy percent of the tournament pot. By the time they split the rest among the stable hands and the horse feed, we got ten bucks each. I can't even buy a basket of chicken tenders at the pub for ten bucks."

"The crowd was cold," Will agreed, swinging his legs back and forth against the wooden rails. "Too hot for them to care. When the humidity hits ninety, the human brain stops processing chivalry. They just want shade and ice. If we want their money, we have to give them something that makes them forget they’re sweating through their underwear."

"What we need is a spectacle," Maeve said, tilting her head back to look up at him. "A real show. The stuff that gets people to stop, pull out their phones, and realize they’re having a good time."

"A spectacle?" Will smirked, leaning down slightly so his face was closer to hers. "What did you have in mind, Maeve? Are you going to juggle the turkey legs? Set them on fire? We could do a whole routine where you toss them to me from across the lane, and I catch them on the point of a lance."

"That sounds like a great way to get sued by the health department," Maeve said, though she couldn't help but picture the absolute absurdity of the scene. "No, it has to be simple. Something that doesn't require a permit or extra equipment. Something that plays into the exact fantasy these people are paying twenty-five dollars a ticket to experience."

Will took a sip of his beer, his eyes tracking a moth that was circling the yellow floodlight above them. "And what fantasy is that? The one where they get dysentery in a muddy ditch, or the one where they have to pay taxes to a guy who lives in a stone tower?"

"The romance, you idiot," Maeve said, swatting at his shin with her clean rag. "Every third person who comes through those gates is a middle-aged woman who has read fifty historical romance novels, or a couple on their third date trying to look cute. They don't want historical accuracy. They want The Princess Bride. They want knights in shining armor and the girls who love them."

Will stared at her for a long moment, the lazy smirk slowly fading from his lips. He lowered his bottle, his dark eyes narrowing as the gears in his head began to turn. "Go on," he said, his voice dropping its sarcastic edge.

"Think about it," Maeve said, her own enthusiasm surprising her as the idea began to take shape in her mind. "You’re a squire. You spend all day running around in the dirt, looking miserable, carrying thirty pounds of steel for some guy who treats you like a servant. I’m the turkey leg girl. I’m covered in soot, stuck behind a hot stove, looking like a peasant."

"An incredibly beautiful peasant," Will murmured, his voice so quiet and dry that Maeve almost missed it over the sound of Toby’s knife scraping his boot.

She cleared her throat, ignoring the sudden, stupid flutter in her chest. "Right. Whatever. The point is, we’re the classic working-class heroes of the faire. If we’re just two tired kids selling food and cleaning stables, we’re invisible. But if we’re... something else? If there’s a story there?"

"What kind of story?" Toby asked, looking up from his boot with sudden interest.

"A courtship," Maeve said, turning her attention back to Will. "A classic, dramatic, star-crossed medieval romance. The brave squire and the hard-working maiden. We play it up. We do it right in front of the booths, where the lines are long and people have nothing to do but watch us."

Will let out a low whistle, a grin slowly spreading across his face. "A fake courtship? Maeve, that’s incredibly dishonest. It’s manipulative. It’s entirely mercenary." He paused, his eyes gleaming with a sudden, sharp light. "I love it. How does it work?"

"We script it," Maeve said, leaning closer to the fence rail. "Nothing too complicated. Just little scenes. Moments that happen during the high-traffic hours when the lines are backed up. You come by the booth to 'see' me. You bring me something ridiculous. A flower you found in the paddock. A ribbon. You play the pining lover who can’t bear to be apart from his lady, even for the length of a tournament."

"And what do you do?" Will asked, his voice teasing. "Do you swoon? Do you drop your tongs and weep into your apron?"

"I do not swoon," Maeve said firmly. "I play the hard-to-get, sassy maiden who is too busy working to be wooed by a penniless squire. The crowd loves that dynamic. It gives them a narrative. They’ll want to see you win me over. They’ll start tipping me to buy you a drink, or tipping you to buy me a ribbon."

"It could work," Toby mused, pointing the tip of his pocketknife at them. "I’ve seen the court performers do stuff like that. The harp player and the guy who does the whip show have this fake rivalry going on, and people love it. They follow them around all day just to see them bicker. They throw twenties into their hats."

Will shifted his weight on the fence, his knees brushing against the sleeve of Maeve’s shirt. The contact was brief, but in the humid night air, the warmth of his skin felt surprisingly intense. "So, let’s say we do this," he said, his eyes locked onto hers. "What’s the script for tomorrow? We can't just start throwing ourselves at each other. It has to build. It has to feel like the crowd is catching us in the middle of a real moment."

"Tomorrow is Sunday," Maeve said, her mind working fast. "The crowd is always bigger, but they’re also lazier. They don't want to walk as much. Around two o'clock, the line at the smokehouse is going to be wrapping around the corner of the lane. That’s when you make your move."

"And what is my move, fair maiden?"

"You come by the booth after the two o'clock joust," Maeve said. "You’ve just come from the arena. You’re dusty, you’re tired, but instead of going to the stables to rest, you come straight to me. You bring me a token. Something simple."

"A horse blanket?" Will suggested. "An old horseshoe? A piece of leather strap?"

"A flower, you idiot," Maeve said, laughing. "A dandelion. A piece of clover from the paddock. Anything that looks like you plucked it in a moment of desperate, romantic inspiration. You present it to me in front of the line. You say something poetic. Something incredibly cheesy."

"I can do cheesy," Will said, his voice dropping into a dramatic, gravelly baritone that made Toby snort with laughter. "‘Oh, sweet lady of the hickory smoke, thy beauty doth outshine the glare of the coals, and thy breath is sweeter than the applewood embers.’"

"Do not say my breath smells like applewood," Maeve warned, though she was laughing so hard she had to lean against the fence post for support. "But yes. That vibe. Just dramatic enough to get the attention of the front five people in line. I’ll act embarrassed. I’ll tell you to get back to your horses before the master of the stables whips you."

"And then?"

"Then we drop a hint about how hard you’re working to save up enough copper to buy me a sweet cake at the end of the day," Maeve said, her eyes shining in the yellow light. "We mention the tips. Indirectly, of course. Something like, ‘Alas, my sweet, the tournament bucket was light today, and I fear I cannot even afford the ribbon thy heart desires.’"

"Oh, that is evil," Toby said, shaking his head in admiration. "The moms in the line are going to lose their minds. They’re going to be shoving five-dollar bills into your jar just so you can buy the poor kid a sandwich."

"It’s not evil, Toby. It’s marketing," Maeve corrected him. "We are simply providing them with an immersive narrative experience. They get a show with their lunch, and we get to buy gas for the drive home."

Will looked down at her, his expression a mix of amusement and something deeper, more calculating. "And how do we split the take? If this works, the extra cash is going to be coming in on both sides. I can't have you taking all the glory while I’m the one doing the heavy lifting in the dirt."

"Fifty-fifty," Maeve said without hesitation. "We pool the tips from the smokehouse jar and whatever you get in your squire pouch during the bit. At the end of every day, we meet right here under the floodlight and split it down the middle. Deal?"

She held out her hand, her palm still slightly grey from the scrub pad but dry and cool now.

Will looked at her hand for a second, then reached down and took it. His hand was larger than hers, his palm calloused from the thick leather reins of the warhorses and the heavy shafts of the lances. His grip was firm, his skin warm and slightly rough against hers. He didn't let go immediately. Instead, he gave her hand a slow, deliberate squeeze, his eyes never leaving hers.

"Deal, bird girl," he said softly. "But if Christopher catches us and fires me, you’re the one who has to tell my mom I’m living in a horse stall."

"Christopher won't fire you," Maeve said, gently pulling her hand back and tucking it into her apron pocket to hide the sudden, ridiculous warmth she felt in her fingers. "As long as the turkey legs keep selling, he doesn't care if we perform a full-scale Shakespearean tragedy in front of the mustard station."

"Alright," Will said, jumping down from the fence with an easy, athletic grace that made his bare shoulders flex under the yellow light. "I need to get to sleep. Sir Garrett has a morning practice at eight, and if his knee is still swollen, I’m going to have to spend an hour massaging horse liniment into his joints before the first gate."

"Gross," Maeve said, stepping back into the shadow of the path. "Goodnight, Will."

"Goodnight, my lady of the grease," he called back, waving his beer bottle as he turned and started walking toward the darkened stables, Toby trailing close behind him.

Maeve stood in the quiet alleyway for a long moment, watching his shadow disappear into the darkness of the horse barns. The air was still thick and heavy with the promise of more heat tomorrow, but for the first time since the opening weekend, she felt a small spike of genuine excitement for the morning. It wasn't just the prospect of the extra cash—though the sixteen dollars currently sitting in her pouch was a grim reminder of why she was here. It was the challenge. The sheer, ridiculous fun of putting on a show in the middle of the chaos.

She walked back to her car, her boots crunching softly on the dry gravel of the staff parking lot. As she drove home down the empty highway, the windows rolled down to let the warm night air whip through her hair, she found herself mentally drafting lines of medieval dialogue.

“Alas, fair squire, thy lance is crooked, but thy heart is true.”

No, that was terrible. She’d have to let Will handle the poetry. He had the dramatic flair for it, the natural, easy charm that came from spending three summers performing for screaming crowds in the dust. She just had to play her part—the sensible, hard-working girl who was far too busy keeping the fires burning to be swept off her feet by a boy with dirt on his face and no pennies in his purse.

By the time she reached her farmhouse apartment, the clock on the dashboard read nearly midnight. She climbed the creaking stairs to her room, stripped off her salt-encrusted garb, and collapsed onto her mattress under the buzzing box fan. The smell of hickory smoke still clung to her skin despite the quick wash she’d had at the stables, but as she closed her eyes and drifted off to sleep, she didn't mind it so much. Tomorrow, that smoke was going to be her stage.