fic: scenes from a pineapple revolution: peppermint salve for bruises
Chapter two. :-) Chapter three, by the way, is tentatively entitled 'The Peanuts of Suspicion.'
Title: Scenes from a Pineapple Revolution (Two: Peppermint Salve for Bruises) (story one here)
Rating: PG
Word Count: 3,436
Summary/Notes: for kageillusionz. In which Erik isn’t actually trying to sell anyone pineapple, Charles is hardly a typical prince, Shaw is a villainous Regent, and there’s a revolution concealing itself in the City fog and cobblestone streets…
In this story: a second meeting, an argument over a newspaper, and some healing.
Earlier, Charles’d said. Next time, earlier. Erik sat on his single rickety stool reading the obnoxious newspaper, and tried not to glance at his pocketwatch every five minutes. Failed.
Earlier. What did that even mean?
Evidently it meant that Charles couldn’t be bothered to give him a proper estimate. Noon. One and five minutes. Half-past two. Three and a bit. Some sort of definition. Honestly. Could heirs to the throne not master the art of telling time?
The ever-present fog lurked lazily around the cobblestones of the square and the corners of market-stalls. The air tasted like exotic spices, imported wares, and damp. The gaslamps glowed, even in the daytime. Necessary.
The newspaper was decidedly not helping his irritation. The words were too close together, huddling in an attempt to save space. The title banner curlicued too extravagantly for his liking. The ink, printed hastily and sloppily, smudged his fingers. He glared at it.
He read the editorial again, more slowly, forming counterarguments in his head.
The writer was a person who signed himself “Professor X,” which Erik decided was not only pretentious but made said writer sound like a villain out of a newfangled sensation novel; the same writer had been publishing steadily, weekly pleas for calm in the City, for patience, for an understanding that change was necessary but would take time. This particular column was, Erik had to admit, well-written-certainly the grammar and rhetoric was more carefully chosen than the average journalist’s blood and thunder-and potentially persuasive, if not for the fundamental flaw of the naiveté at its heart.
Professor X was asking the populace to wait. To trust in established channels, in the coming end of the Regency, a year less two weeks away. Suggesting that value might remain in the institutions as they were.
Erik’s hand clenched, crumpling the newsprint.
And this of course was the moment Charles-the Crown Prince, Erik’s brain frantically reminded him-ducked through the flap of the stall door.
“Sorry, sorry, I did mean to be here sooner-I just couldn’t-never mind, how’re you, today? Market going well?”
Erik blinked, recalled after too many seconds that he was here undercover as an exotic-fruit merchant and should really give a damn about his sales, and said, “Reasonably well.” And hoped the words sounded definitive.
That ocean-blue gaze was surprisingly shrewd, beneath the concealing shadows of the cloak. “You didn’t think I’d come, did you?”
“I,” Erik said, uncomfortable with this insight. “You said you’d be early.”
“Earlier, I said…” With a sigh, a shrug; Charles glanced around the fruit-tent, as if searching for something to serve as a distraction. The watchful mounds of pineapples and apricots and oranges provided no answer.
The newspaper, evidently, did. “Oh, you read the Times?”
“Everyone does,” Erik grumbled, annoyed by even this much disclosure of personal information, and then annoyed that he wasn’t even more annoyed. “Not exactly unusual. Highness.”
“Oh, please, no, Charles…” And Charles hesitated for a split second, gaze flicking up to his and then away. “What section is that?”
“Editorials. I have something for you.” Because those glorious eyes looked just a little too unsure. Too concerned about being welcome. “Here.”
“You…bought me…gloves?”
“They’re not expensive. They’re not even-you must have better. Never mind. I can-”
“I love them.” Charles slid one on, then the other, and wiggled fingertips at him. A magic spell. Just like that. And Erik, bespelled, couldn’t look away. “Were they terribly dear, though? And you didn’t have to. I mean-not that I-I do appreciate this, I-”
“You do own gloves, you’re saying.”
“Well…yes. But these…” Charles regarded his own hands, wrapped in snug cerulean blue, fingertips showing and flexible under the knit. “You bought these. For me. Which is worth more than any ten tailor-ordered kid-thin sets…Erik?”
A question in that tea-and-crumpets voice. Not a why; they both knew why. It’d been simmering between them since the moment they’d met.
It was, however, a: why now? why this? so soon? and how can I thank you?
“You had cold hands,” Erik told him. “And now you’ll owe me a favor.”
Somehow this was the right thing to say; Charles smiled, tension easing. “I’m surprised you didn’t buy twenty pairs, then. I am, not to sound too arrogant, the heir to the throne.”
“Only a little arrogant… And that would’ve given the game away.” There was another minor thought scratching at his brain for attention. Had to do with how readily Charles’d accepted that explanation. How easy he’d found it to believe that Erik wanted something from him.
True, of course. Erik wanted many things from him. That list began with palace access and ended with jewel-blue eyes dark with desire, that elegant voice ragged with need, that enticing body entirely sex-flushed and wanton and euphoric beneath him in bed.
And yet the thought didn’t sit right. Thorny. Prickly as a rosebush in his head. And yet, and yet.
“You’ll have to inform me how much arrogance is acceptable, then. Proper limits. You were reading this? Professor X? What did you think? I’m certain you do have an opinion.”
Erik eyed the newspaper. Eyed the fingertip brushing words, heedless of ink-smears, palms enfolded safely in protective thick wool.
“I think it’s naïve. Impractical.” No reason to hold back, not with the Prince asking for his honest answer. “Good intentions. But foolish.”
Charles tilted an eyebrow, assessing. “Why foolish?”
“The author’s asking us-everyone-to wait. But for how long? Another year? More? The Crown Prince’s birthday was only-” At which point he stopped, shocked yet again by the fact that he was declaring this to the Crown Prince; Charles, however, only nodded and made a little eyebrow gesture: go on.
“It’ll be nearly a year at best. And no one knows-I’m sorry-no one truly knows what the Prince will do once he becomes King. Or even-” He stopped, very fast.
“Or even if he’ll live,” Charles filled in, exquisitely dry. “Yes. Well. I can reassure you on that front, at least. But you still think it’s too innocent.”
“It is. The Council of Lords-they’ll never pass these reforms. There won’t be voices for the lower class, the merchants, the immigrants, women. The people in power’ll cling to power.”
“They might surprise you-”
“How likely is that?”
Charles glanced away. Ran that fingertip slowly along the edge between the now-crinkled news of the day and Erik’s splintery makeshift accounting table, as if contrasting the different sensations, memorizing the roughness of old wood versus cheap pulp printing on his skin. “Not extremely. But if the reforms’re proposed by the King…”
“They’ll be blocked even so.”
“And violence is the alternative? I have heard the rumors. Dynamite in the streets. Beneath the Lords’ meeting chambers. Beneath the royal chambers. Tell me how that convinces me that the revolution will be any better.”
“There’ll be change. Have you seen the streets? Have you seen the people begging? The women whose husbands have deserted them, the guardsmen laughing when they violate a woman in the streets, the men out of work because they have the wrong accent, Charles?”
Charles glanced over at a particularly large and leafy pineapple. Said nothing for a moment, communing in silence with the fruit, and then: “Yes. I have. Why do you think I leave the palace? It isn’t simply to meet you, as much as I’m enjoying this. I talk to people, Erik. I’ve been-not for terribly long, I admit, I’ve not been able to-but I found a way out here as soon as I could. And you-you make a living importing delicacies for the royal family. Don’t think I’ve not noticed.”
Erik, who’d just sold a consignment of fresh grapefruit to the palace kitchens that morning, wanted to argue. Wanted to shout: it’s only a cover, I don’t mean it, I’m here to find a way into the palace and slide a knife into Sebastian Shaw’s throat for what he did to my parents…
In the silence, Charles went on. The iron was audible, not for the first time but the most noticeable, threaded all through the cloth-of-gold. “Do you-yourself, I mean, for your own future-think rebellion is the answer? I’ve seen fighting, Erik. The Regency happened during my lifetime. I was a boy, but I remember. So much blood. So much pain. And foreigners, anyone who seems different or suspect…they’re the first to fall. So, no, I’m not as innocent as-as you think Professor X might be. I simply-I’ve seen enough death. I can’t believe it’s the right way. Not when I’m only a year from the throne.”
“And will you be able to make things right,” Erik asked, once he could control his voice again, “for all the victims of Shaw’s guardsmen, of the abusive husbands, of the petty officials who’ve left mothers to starve merely because they didn’t have the appropriate City accent?”
Charles said, instantly and plainly, “Never.” And then said, “Thank you,” and pulled his hood up again, fabric swirling around his face.
Erik, desperate deep down in his bones for him not to leave, desperate for no easily explicable reason, shot to his feet. Flung out a hand, uselessly. “Wait.”
Charles turned, framed by curtain-flaps. Wide sea-spray eyes regarded him solemnly.
“You…” He didn’t know what he’d meant to say. He’d not had any words in mind. Only that he didn’t want Charles to go.
Beautiful, brilliant, remarkable, irritating, thought-provoking, intoxicating-and useful, damned useful, he had to remember that-Charles.
Words, belatedly, thumped home. As soon as I could, Charles’d said. I’ve not been able to leave.
“You’re the Prince,” he said, for lack of anything better, aware of all the silence, the universe swelling with it. “You can go anywhere you want. Change anything you want. You’ll be King. Use it.”
Charles opened his mouth, closed it, remained incredibly motionless in Erik’s doorway.
“You came here,” Erik said, reminding him. “You keep your promises.”
That got a swallow, a single breath of air. “I try. When I-I try not to make them. I never know if-but I thought I’d be safe. Today.” And one hand lifted to gather the concealing cloak closer around his body.
Erik’s hand snapped out. Caught that pen-callused freckled one.
Charles blushed intensely. “I’m sorry, I’m not-I know it’s not terribly refined-I do a lot of scientific work, and writing-”
That wasn’t what’d captured his eye.
“Who-Charles, who did this to you?”
Those bruises were new. Hadn’t existed two days ago. There’d been no ugly purple-black soot-smudges around that forearm, visible under the swing of a sleeve.
“Oh.” Charles studied his hand, cradled in Erik’s. “That…Sebastian wanted my attention, this morning. It’s all right. It looks worse than it is; I bruise easily, I always have.” But he didn’t take the hand away.
“Sebastian did this to you. The Regent.” He couldn’t let his fingers clamp down in anger. They were holding wounded royal ones. “He hurt you? He’s hurt you before?”
“He’s…a strong man. He likes to use his strength.” Charles didn’t shrug, hand currently being held, but the gesture lay in the inflection: it is what it is, I’m handling it, leave it alone.
Erik shoved down the white-hot rage-wondered why the mere sight of injury to that pale skin was causing so much rage-and said, “Sit down. I might have something. To help.”
“Really?” Intrigued; and Charles tried to peek over his shoulder while Erik dove into the tiny pack he kept under the storefront, the pack full of preparations for every eventuality, in case he needed to run or fight or stitch up a wound. A spare shirt. Money. A handgun. He said, without needing to look around, “Sit, Charles,” and Charles stopped attempting to see around his back and settled back down on the stool with a sigh.
“Hardly fair. If you’re planning to suggest some form of medicinal aid, I’d like to know what it is before I say yes. Is that a rope? Why do you have a rope?”
“I’m planning to kidnap you. Here.” He came back over. Offered the small ceramic pot for inspection. “Salve. I use it.” And then, to provide proof, dipped a finger in. Let the wintergreen chill spread across his skin.
“I trust you,” Charles said, and Erik thought helplessly, you shouldn’t. “You didn’t need to do that, but thank you.”
“You shouldn’t trust me,” Erik said, because he couldn’t listen to the gratitude, “you’ve only just met me. For all you know I was serious just now.”
“What?”
“The rope?”
“Oh, that.” Charles grinned. “As it happens, I do carry a knife. Two. And I’m not telling you where to find them. Anyway your rope is most likely to help with those curtain-flaps on the stall in bad weather. Is it designed for bruises?”
Erik looked at him, sitting there amid piles of exotic coconut and banana and tangerine. Perched on a cracked wooden stool, wearing an ancient cloak most likely dug out of an attic bursting with stored out-of-fashion aristocratic costumes, and chattering-entirely accurately-about the needs of a fruit-merchant’s business. Hair rumpled from the hood, eyes the color of star-sapphires shining through the City gloom, and bruises braceleting his arm.
Despite the supposed presence of knives-and if the second one wasn’t a lie it was impressively well-hidden, because he couldn’t spot it-and despite the straightforward discussion of potential dynamite beneath royal bedchambers, Charles somehow radiated goodness. Kindness. Like a beacon. No unhappy endings allowed in the fairytale.
Charles’d asked him a question. “…yes. Well. It’s for everything. Most things. Roll up your sleeve.” He’d almost reached out to do it himself. The thought’d sleeted across his mind last-minute: a bruise like that, the size and shape of a vicious man’s hand, grabbing at a moving arm…
Charles was seventeen, and only barely that. Seventeen, beautiful, in poor health in some unspecified way, and still nearly a year from his coming of age and into immense political power. Erik’s heart shivered, which surprised him since he’d believed that particular organ long used to cold.
Charles pushed up the sleeve in question with his other hand, adroitly. “What’s in it?”
“Herbs.” This got a scientifically-affronted glare. Erik barely managed not to laugh, and thought: good, thank you, thank G-d, not too badly injured after all. “Sorry. Peppermint, comfrey, witch hazel…beeswax…hold still.”
“Where’d you learn-ouch-oh, better…thank you…parsley? I smell like an herb garden. Do you have a recipe, or did you-”
“It was my mother’s,” Erik said, and ordered his hands not to pause at all, spreading the tingle of mint-green salve over fragile skin, numbing pain as much as possible after the fact. “I always keep some on hand.” He’d supplied tiny pots for most of the revolution, too. “Better?”
“Very.” Charles regarded him with unnervingly truthful eyes, enormous and sincere. “Thank you. I may have to trouble you for more, sometime.”
“Charles-” He stopped, fingers slick and cool, lying motionless just below the cruel mark of a different hand. “Take this batch. I’ll make more.”
“If you happen to know the precise proportions, I could look into how the different components interact-”
“Or you could simply use it.”
“Oh, that too.” Charles’s smile was crooked, winsome, fleeting. “It seems I owe you two favors.”
He should say yes. He ought to say yes. He ought to lean in and run his hand up that vulnerable arm and take advantage of the moment, the promise, the connection that’d burned so brightly since the moment they’d met, spark flickering wildly in the grey mysterious air.
“Not for this.” His voice scraped roughly out of his throat. “Still only one.”
“Well,” Charles said, and those splendid eyes dropped to their joined hands, medicinally messy and still touching; lifted to find his once more, and if there’d been more to that sentence it fell away into the hush.
The fog wove sinuously, kittenish and playful, around tent-flaps and stall-legs. The tangerines twinkled, tiny suns in their basket. All the color in the world, and his hand on Charles’s arm.
“It’ll be a few days.” Very soft, almost soundless, apologetic. “I have to-there’s a reception honoring returning army generals, and then the opening of a new national history museum-all Regency-approved, by the way, so I can only hope it’s an entertaining work of fiction-and Sebastian said something about a country estate tour, which I assume, given the season, is a distressingly transparent plan to get me out of the City. I fully expect to be too ill to be moved, but I’ll have to be convincing…”
“They’ll be convinced.” It was a question.
And Charles sighed. “Yes. I’m-it won’t be unheard-of. Can we leave it at that? I’ll come when I can. Next week. Not early.”
No, Erik wanted to shout. No. We can’t.
But that voice was so genuine. Asking him to let it go, to trust that Charles could handle himself, to listen to the request, to respect the person asking.
No wonder Sebastian Shaw wanted the Crown Prince buried in the country. That voice said: I know you, I know everything about you and I’ve nevertheless chosen to think you’re trustworthy, I believe you’re a good person inside and you’ll make the best possible decision. The eyes proclaimed as much as well, unwaveringly.
And that was dangerous, so dangerous, because Erik wanted for a heartbeat to believe it all. To live in a world like that, full of hope and temptingly bright. To be the good man that Charles saw. And if it worked on him, even on him…
Charles could inspire armies. The universe would fall.
He said, “Will you be well enough?”
That gaze was endlessly blue and clear and true. “Enough.”
Walking him to the tent-flap of the stall-door, subtly slipping a nectarine into his cloak-pocket to join the pot of salve, Erik told him, “Come when you can, I’ll be here, you still owe me one favor.” And Charles’s smile lit up the encroaching dusk, more effervescent than the streetlamps outside.
The Tuesday next, he was both surprised and unsurprised to read Professor X’s latest editorial. The one calling for attention to the plights of incoming refugees, Genoshan and otherwise, and suggesting that human rights reforms ought to be championed by any Lord worthy of the title, which after all implied responsibility to those under one’s care.
The arguments opened and ended with devastating emotional portraits-a man turned away from a job simply because he had an accent, though he also had two small motherless children; a woman begging outside the palace courtyard-and in between swept into overwhelming precedent. Reminders of the implicit contract between the head of a demesne and his vassals. Couched in such irrefutably historical terms that most readers would simply be convinced, and not realize how radical the proposal in fact was, that Lords should vote on measures based on the needs and desires of their dependents instead of their own.
Erik looked at the paper very thoughtfully when he finished. Wondered who else Charles spoke to in the City, and whether any of those persons belonged to the aged stone spires of the University.
His heart performed an unbidden unhappy little twitch. Charles spoke to persons who weren’t him, outside the palace walls.
Of course Charles did. Charles didn’t risk the Regent’s displeasure only for him. And he’d not want that, in any case. Not that kind of single-minded impractical impassioned devotion. No room for it in his rigidly aimed life.
His fingertips tingled with the memory of mint.
He’d made more, to have on hand. He’d made extra.
On Wednesday, the Times led with a rather lurid story about the Crown Prince entering into a sudden decline, unable to leave his bed, physicians summoned, travel impossible. The Regent had reportedly thrown a vase at the wall upon hearing the news, and then tried to claim that he was simply anxious for the Prince’s well-being.
This made Erik smile. And then he stopped smiling, because the writer obviously had a highly-placed source inside the palace, and those bedside accounts of excruciating pain and wandering wits and hourly doses of laudanum were given in such gleefully gruesome detail…
He threw the newspaper away. I’ll come, Charles’d promised. When I can.
He ordered extra pineapple, to be delivered fresh Thursday, and more to arrive on Friday as well.
Title: Scenes from a Pineapple Revolution (Two: Peppermint Salve for Bruises) (story one here)
Rating: PG
Word Count: 3,436
Summary/Notes: for kageillusionz. In which Erik isn’t actually trying to sell anyone pineapple, Charles is hardly a typical prince, Shaw is a villainous Regent, and there’s a revolution concealing itself in the City fog and cobblestone streets…
In this story: a second meeting, an argument over a newspaper, and some healing.
Earlier, Charles’d said. Next time, earlier. Erik sat on his single rickety stool reading the obnoxious newspaper, and tried not to glance at his pocketwatch every five minutes. Failed.
Earlier. What did that even mean?
Evidently it meant that Charles couldn’t be bothered to give him a proper estimate. Noon. One and five minutes. Half-past two. Three and a bit. Some sort of definition. Honestly. Could heirs to the throne not master the art of telling time?
The ever-present fog lurked lazily around the cobblestones of the square and the corners of market-stalls. The air tasted like exotic spices, imported wares, and damp. The gaslamps glowed, even in the daytime. Necessary.
The newspaper was decidedly not helping his irritation. The words were too close together, huddling in an attempt to save space. The title banner curlicued too extravagantly for his liking. The ink, printed hastily and sloppily, smudged his fingers. He glared at it.
He read the editorial again, more slowly, forming counterarguments in his head.
The writer was a person who signed himself “Professor X,” which Erik decided was not only pretentious but made said writer sound like a villain out of a newfangled sensation novel; the same writer had been publishing steadily, weekly pleas for calm in the City, for patience, for an understanding that change was necessary but would take time. This particular column was, Erik had to admit, well-written-certainly the grammar and rhetoric was more carefully chosen than the average journalist’s blood and thunder-and potentially persuasive, if not for the fundamental flaw of the naiveté at its heart.
Professor X was asking the populace to wait. To trust in established channels, in the coming end of the Regency, a year less two weeks away. Suggesting that value might remain in the institutions as they were.
Erik’s hand clenched, crumpling the newsprint.
And this of course was the moment Charles-the Crown Prince, Erik’s brain frantically reminded him-ducked through the flap of the stall door.
“Sorry, sorry, I did mean to be here sooner-I just couldn’t-never mind, how’re you, today? Market going well?”
Erik blinked, recalled after too many seconds that he was here undercover as an exotic-fruit merchant and should really give a damn about his sales, and said, “Reasonably well.” And hoped the words sounded definitive.
That ocean-blue gaze was surprisingly shrewd, beneath the concealing shadows of the cloak. “You didn’t think I’d come, did you?”
“I,” Erik said, uncomfortable with this insight. “You said you’d be early.”
“Earlier, I said…” With a sigh, a shrug; Charles glanced around the fruit-tent, as if searching for something to serve as a distraction. The watchful mounds of pineapples and apricots and oranges provided no answer.
The newspaper, evidently, did. “Oh, you read the Times?”
“Everyone does,” Erik grumbled, annoyed by even this much disclosure of personal information, and then annoyed that he wasn’t even more annoyed. “Not exactly unusual. Highness.”
“Oh, please, no, Charles…” And Charles hesitated for a split second, gaze flicking up to his and then away. “What section is that?”
“Editorials. I have something for you.” Because those glorious eyes looked just a little too unsure. Too concerned about being welcome. “Here.”
“You…bought me…gloves?”
“They’re not expensive. They’re not even-you must have better. Never mind. I can-”
“I love them.” Charles slid one on, then the other, and wiggled fingertips at him. A magic spell. Just like that. And Erik, bespelled, couldn’t look away. “Were they terribly dear, though? And you didn’t have to. I mean-not that I-I do appreciate this, I-”
“You do own gloves, you’re saying.”
“Well…yes. But these…” Charles regarded his own hands, wrapped in snug cerulean blue, fingertips showing and flexible under the knit. “You bought these. For me. Which is worth more than any ten tailor-ordered kid-thin sets…Erik?”
A question in that tea-and-crumpets voice. Not a why; they both knew why. It’d been simmering between them since the moment they’d met.
It was, however, a: why now? why this? so soon? and how can I thank you?
“You had cold hands,” Erik told him. “And now you’ll owe me a favor.”
Somehow this was the right thing to say; Charles smiled, tension easing. “I’m surprised you didn’t buy twenty pairs, then. I am, not to sound too arrogant, the heir to the throne.”
“Only a little arrogant… And that would’ve given the game away.” There was another minor thought scratching at his brain for attention. Had to do with how readily Charles’d accepted that explanation. How easy he’d found it to believe that Erik wanted something from him.
True, of course. Erik wanted many things from him. That list began with palace access and ended with jewel-blue eyes dark with desire, that elegant voice ragged with need, that enticing body entirely sex-flushed and wanton and euphoric beneath him in bed.
And yet the thought didn’t sit right. Thorny. Prickly as a rosebush in his head. And yet, and yet.
“You’ll have to inform me how much arrogance is acceptable, then. Proper limits. You were reading this? Professor X? What did you think? I’m certain you do have an opinion.”
Erik eyed the newspaper. Eyed the fingertip brushing words, heedless of ink-smears, palms enfolded safely in protective thick wool.
“I think it’s naïve. Impractical.” No reason to hold back, not with the Prince asking for his honest answer. “Good intentions. But foolish.”
Charles tilted an eyebrow, assessing. “Why foolish?”
“The author’s asking us-everyone-to wait. But for how long? Another year? More? The Crown Prince’s birthday was only-” At which point he stopped, shocked yet again by the fact that he was declaring this to the Crown Prince; Charles, however, only nodded and made a little eyebrow gesture: go on.
“It’ll be nearly a year at best. And no one knows-I’m sorry-no one truly knows what the Prince will do once he becomes King. Or even-” He stopped, very fast.
“Or even if he’ll live,” Charles filled in, exquisitely dry. “Yes. Well. I can reassure you on that front, at least. But you still think it’s too innocent.”
“It is. The Council of Lords-they’ll never pass these reforms. There won’t be voices for the lower class, the merchants, the immigrants, women. The people in power’ll cling to power.”
“They might surprise you-”
“How likely is that?”
Charles glanced away. Ran that fingertip slowly along the edge between the now-crinkled news of the day and Erik’s splintery makeshift accounting table, as if contrasting the different sensations, memorizing the roughness of old wood versus cheap pulp printing on his skin. “Not extremely. But if the reforms’re proposed by the King…”
“They’ll be blocked even so.”
“And violence is the alternative? I have heard the rumors. Dynamite in the streets. Beneath the Lords’ meeting chambers. Beneath the royal chambers. Tell me how that convinces me that the revolution will be any better.”
“There’ll be change. Have you seen the streets? Have you seen the people begging? The women whose husbands have deserted them, the guardsmen laughing when they violate a woman in the streets, the men out of work because they have the wrong accent, Charles?”
Charles glanced over at a particularly large and leafy pineapple. Said nothing for a moment, communing in silence with the fruit, and then: “Yes. I have. Why do you think I leave the palace? It isn’t simply to meet you, as much as I’m enjoying this. I talk to people, Erik. I’ve been-not for terribly long, I admit, I’ve not been able to-but I found a way out here as soon as I could. And you-you make a living importing delicacies for the royal family. Don’t think I’ve not noticed.”
Erik, who’d just sold a consignment of fresh grapefruit to the palace kitchens that morning, wanted to argue. Wanted to shout: it’s only a cover, I don’t mean it, I’m here to find a way into the palace and slide a knife into Sebastian Shaw’s throat for what he did to my parents…
In the silence, Charles went on. The iron was audible, not for the first time but the most noticeable, threaded all through the cloth-of-gold. “Do you-yourself, I mean, for your own future-think rebellion is the answer? I’ve seen fighting, Erik. The Regency happened during my lifetime. I was a boy, but I remember. So much blood. So much pain. And foreigners, anyone who seems different or suspect…they’re the first to fall. So, no, I’m not as innocent as-as you think Professor X might be. I simply-I’ve seen enough death. I can’t believe it’s the right way. Not when I’m only a year from the throne.”
“And will you be able to make things right,” Erik asked, once he could control his voice again, “for all the victims of Shaw’s guardsmen, of the abusive husbands, of the petty officials who’ve left mothers to starve merely because they didn’t have the appropriate City accent?”
Charles said, instantly and plainly, “Never.” And then said, “Thank you,” and pulled his hood up again, fabric swirling around his face.
Erik, desperate deep down in his bones for him not to leave, desperate for no easily explicable reason, shot to his feet. Flung out a hand, uselessly. “Wait.”
Charles turned, framed by curtain-flaps. Wide sea-spray eyes regarded him solemnly.
“You…” He didn’t know what he’d meant to say. He’d not had any words in mind. Only that he didn’t want Charles to go.
Beautiful, brilliant, remarkable, irritating, thought-provoking, intoxicating-and useful, damned useful, he had to remember that-Charles.
Words, belatedly, thumped home. As soon as I could, Charles’d said. I’ve not been able to leave.
“You’re the Prince,” he said, for lack of anything better, aware of all the silence, the universe swelling with it. “You can go anywhere you want. Change anything you want. You’ll be King. Use it.”
Charles opened his mouth, closed it, remained incredibly motionless in Erik’s doorway.
“You came here,” Erik said, reminding him. “You keep your promises.”
That got a swallow, a single breath of air. “I try. When I-I try not to make them. I never know if-but I thought I’d be safe. Today.” And one hand lifted to gather the concealing cloak closer around his body.
Erik’s hand snapped out. Caught that pen-callused freckled one.
Charles blushed intensely. “I’m sorry, I’m not-I know it’s not terribly refined-I do a lot of scientific work, and writing-”
That wasn’t what’d captured his eye.
“Who-Charles, who did this to you?”
Those bruises were new. Hadn’t existed two days ago. There’d been no ugly purple-black soot-smudges around that forearm, visible under the swing of a sleeve.
“Oh.” Charles studied his hand, cradled in Erik’s. “That…Sebastian wanted my attention, this morning. It’s all right. It looks worse than it is; I bruise easily, I always have.” But he didn’t take the hand away.
“Sebastian did this to you. The Regent.” He couldn’t let his fingers clamp down in anger. They were holding wounded royal ones. “He hurt you? He’s hurt you before?”
“He’s…a strong man. He likes to use his strength.” Charles didn’t shrug, hand currently being held, but the gesture lay in the inflection: it is what it is, I’m handling it, leave it alone.
Erik shoved down the white-hot rage-wondered why the mere sight of injury to that pale skin was causing so much rage-and said, “Sit down. I might have something. To help.”
“Really?” Intrigued; and Charles tried to peek over his shoulder while Erik dove into the tiny pack he kept under the storefront, the pack full of preparations for every eventuality, in case he needed to run or fight or stitch up a wound. A spare shirt. Money. A handgun. He said, without needing to look around, “Sit, Charles,” and Charles stopped attempting to see around his back and settled back down on the stool with a sigh.
“Hardly fair. If you’re planning to suggest some form of medicinal aid, I’d like to know what it is before I say yes. Is that a rope? Why do you have a rope?”
“I’m planning to kidnap you. Here.” He came back over. Offered the small ceramic pot for inspection. “Salve. I use it.” And then, to provide proof, dipped a finger in. Let the wintergreen chill spread across his skin.
“I trust you,” Charles said, and Erik thought helplessly, you shouldn’t. “You didn’t need to do that, but thank you.”
“You shouldn’t trust me,” Erik said, because he couldn’t listen to the gratitude, “you’ve only just met me. For all you know I was serious just now.”
“What?”
“The rope?”
“Oh, that.” Charles grinned. “As it happens, I do carry a knife. Two. And I’m not telling you where to find them. Anyway your rope is most likely to help with those curtain-flaps on the stall in bad weather. Is it designed for bruises?”
Erik looked at him, sitting there amid piles of exotic coconut and banana and tangerine. Perched on a cracked wooden stool, wearing an ancient cloak most likely dug out of an attic bursting with stored out-of-fashion aristocratic costumes, and chattering-entirely accurately-about the needs of a fruit-merchant’s business. Hair rumpled from the hood, eyes the color of star-sapphires shining through the City gloom, and bruises braceleting his arm.
Despite the supposed presence of knives-and if the second one wasn’t a lie it was impressively well-hidden, because he couldn’t spot it-and despite the straightforward discussion of potential dynamite beneath royal bedchambers, Charles somehow radiated goodness. Kindness. Like a beacon. No unhappy endings allowed in the fairytale.
Charles’d asked him a question. “…yes. Well. It’s for everything. Most things. Roll up your sleeve.” He’d almost reached out to do it himself. The thought’d sleeted across his mind last-minute: a bruise like that, the size and shape of a vicious man’s hand, grabbing at a moving arm…
Charles was seventeen, and only barely that. Seventeen, beautiful, in poor health in some unspecified way, and still nearly a year from his coming of age and into immense political power. Erik’s heart shivered, which surprised him since he’d believed that particular organ long used to cold.
Charles pushed up the sleeve in question with his other hand, adroitly. “What’s in it?”
“Herbs.” This got a scientifically-affronted glare. Erik barely managed not to laugh, and thought: good, thank you, thank G-d, not too badly injured after all. “Sorry. Peppermint, comfrey, witch hazel…beeswax…hold still.”
“Where’d you learn-ouch-oh, better…thank you…parsley? I smell like an herb garden. Do you have a recipe, or did you-”
“It was my mother’s,” Erik said, and ordered his hands not to pause at all, spreading the tingle of mint-green salve over fragile skin, numbing pain as much as possible after the fact. “I always keep some on hand.” He’d supplied tiny pots for most of the revolution, too. “Better?”
“Very.” Charles regarded him with unnervingly truthful eyes, enormous and sincere. “Thank you. I may have to trouble you for more, sometime.”
“Charles-” He stopped, fingers slick and cool, lying motionless just below the cruel mark of a different hand. “Take this batch. I’ll make more.”
“If you happen to know the precise proportions, I could look into how the different components interact-”
“Or you could simply use it.”
“Oh, that too.” Charles’s smile was crooked, winsome, fleeting. “It seems I owe you two favors.”
He should say yes. He ought to say yes. He ought to lean in and run his hand up that vulnerable arm and take advantage of the moment, the promise, the connection that’d burned so brightly since the moment they’d met, spark flickering wildly in the grey mysterious air.
“Not for this.” His voice scraped roughly out of his throat. “Still only one.”
“Well,” Charles said, and those splendid eyes dropped to their joined hands, medicinally messy and still touching; lifted to find his once more, and if there’d been more to that sentence it fell away into the hush.
The fog wove sinuously, kittenish and playful, around tent-flaps and stall-legs. The tangerines twinkled, tiny suns in their basket. All the color in the world, and his hand on Charles’s arm.
“It’ll be a few days.” Very soft, almost soundless, apologetic. “I have to-there’s a reception honoring returning army generals, and then the opening of a new national history museum-all Regency-approved, by the way, so I can only hope it’s an entertaining work of fiction-and Sebastian said something about a country estate tour, which I assume, given the season, is a distressingly transparent plan to get me out of the City. I fully expect to be too ill to be moved, but I’ll have to be convincing…”
“They’ll be convinced.” It was a question.
And Charles sighed. “Yes. I’m-it won’t be unheard-of. Can we leave it at that? I’ll come when I can. Next week. Not early.”
No, Erik wanted to shout. No. We can’t.
But that voice was so genuine. Asking him to let it go, to trust that Charles could handle himself, to listen to the request, to respect the person asking.
No wonder Sebastian Shaw wanted the Crown Prince buried in the country. That voice said: I know you, I know everything about you and I’ve nevertheless chosen to think you’re trustworthy, I believe you’re a good person inside and you’ll make the best possible decision. The eyes proclaimed as much as well, unwaveringly.
And that was dangerous, so dangerous, because Erik wanted for a heartbeat to believe it all. To live in a world like that, full of hope and temptingly bright. To be the good man that Charles saw. And if it worked on him, even on him…
Charles could inspire armies. The universe would fall.
He said, “Will you be well enough?”
That gaze was endlessly blue and clear and true. “Enough.”
Walking him to the tent-flap of the stall-door, subtly slipping a nectarine into his cloak-pocket to join the pot of salve, Erik told him, “Come when you can, I’ll be here, you still owe me one favor.” And Charles’s smile lit up the encroaching dusk, more effervescent than the streetlamps outside.
The Tuesday next, he was both surprised and unsurprised to read Professor X’s latest editorial. The one calling for attention to the plights of incoming refugees, Genoshan and otherwise, and suggesting that human rights reforms ought to be championed by any Lord worthy of the title, which after all implied responsibility to those under one’s care.
The arguments opened and ended with devastating emotional portraits-a man turned away from a job simply because he had an accent, though he also had two small motherless children; a woman begging outside the palace courtyard-and in between swept into overwhelming precedent. Reminders of the implicit contract between the head of a demesne and his vassals. Couched in such irrefutably historical terms that most readers would simply be convinced, and not realize how radical the proposal in fact was, that Lords should vote on measures based on the needs and desires of their dependents instead of their own.
Erik looked at the paper very thoughtfully when he finished. Wondered who else Charles spoke to in the City, and whether any of those persons belonged to the aged stone spires of the University.
His heart performed an unbidden unhappy little twitch. Charles spoke to persons who weren’t him, outside the palace walls.
Of course Charles did. Charles didn’t risk the Regent’s displeasure only for him. And he’d not want that, in any case. Not that kind of single-minded impractical impassioned devotion. No room for it in his rigidly aimed life.
His fingertips tingled with the memory of mint.
He’d made more, to have on hand. He’d made extra.
On Wednesday, the Times led with a rather lurid story about the Crown Prince entering into a sudden decline, unable to leave his bed, physicians summoned, travel impossible. The Regent had reportedly thrown a vase at the wall upon hearing the news, and then tried to claim that he was simply anxious for the Prince’s well-being.
This made Erik smile. And then he stopped smiling, because the writer obviously had a highly-placed source inside the palace, and those bedside accounts of excruciating pain and wandering wits and hourly doses of laudanum were given in such gleefully gruesome detail…
He threw the newspaper away. I’ll come, Charles’d promised. When I can.
He ordered extra pineapple, to be delivered fresh Thursday, and more to arrive on Friday as well.