Chapter Text
The first time Charles sees Prince Edwin, he’s still living down by the docks with his mum and dad. Dad is at work, hauling cargo off the great ships that have just come into the port, and Mum is at home sick. She’s had a nasty cough that’s only gotten worse with all the hours she spends hunched over her washing tubs, the lye-infused steam soaking into her lungs.
Which means Charles is free to run around the Port District unsupervised, as long as he stays far out of sight of the cargo docks and his dad. He kisses his mum goodbye in the morning, promising that he’ll stay out of trouble. He tells her he’ll bring her back some of Amanita’s famous meat pasties, which are sure to warm her up, and then he’s off, a twelve-year-old boy with the entire world to explore.
His first stop is the fish and produce market, which is smelly but usually a good place to find some spare change in the mud. He perches on top of some stacked crates and watches for the glint of coins to catch his eye, scrambling down each time before some other eager orphan can snag the prize. He comes away with enough to buy a small, wrinkly apple, which he eats down to the core as he heads over to the shops.
He could just steal some food—he’s small enough to slip through a crowd mostly unnoticed, and quick enough to get away—but the last time he did, he tripped over a stray bundle of rope and got caught. The resultant beating by Dad wasn’t worth the few mouthfuls of bread, even if it had quieted the constant growling of his stomach.
At the shops, Charles spends some time at Tragic Mick’s, poking curiously at the far-reaching maps and foreign artifacts the shopkeeper has collected over the years. There’s no way he could ever afford any of it, but Mick is nice enough to let him look anyway. When he’s gazing through an enormous brass telescope or tracing his fingers along the inked lines of another continent, he can almost imagine himself there—sometimes as a sailor, like his dad in the off-season, and sometimes as a fierce pirate, plundering the seas and taking no prisoners.
When he inevitably gets bored he bids Mick goodbye and heads back to the docks. If he’s sneaky enough, maybe he can climb into the rigging of a docked ship and take a nap in one of the sails. Up there, it’s like the whole world vanishes, just him and the sun-warmed cloth swaying in the breeze.
The docks are abuzz with a crowd when he gets there. Charles shoves his way between their legs until he can get to the front and finally sees what they’re all looking at—the biggest ship Charles has ever seen is pulling into port.
Her crew is shouting orders over the wind, throwing ropes and lowering sails in perfect harmony. As they finally pull the ship gently alongside the dock, the gangway lowers and the fanciest people Charles has ever seen disembark.
First is a guard all in armor, who clears the way through the throng of people clamoring for attention. “Make way! Back! Get back!” he yells, until finally a path has been cleared all the way to the carriage that has just pulled up—also the fanciest thing Charles has ever seen.
After the guard comes a beautiful woman, her dark hair pinned in an elaborate style and her dress dripping with finery. His mum hasn’t ever washed anything as fancy as this, all lace and tiny embroidered jewels. She’s holding the hand of a boy, about Charles’ own age, with a nervous expression on his face.
They look familiar—they’re obviously rich, but Charles feels like they’re not just boring nobles. He can’t place it right now, and he doesn’t have much time to look closer, because all of the sudden the crowd surges forward.
Charles falls to his hands and knees under the wave of force, mud spattering up into his face and eyes, and feels someone’s hobnailed boots bite into his fingers. He lets out a cry but he can’t get up, pressed down by all the much larger bodies around him, yelling, pushing. They’re crushing him. He curls up to protect his stomach and puts his arms over his head, the way he does when Dad is especially drunk.
Suddenly, he feels a hand grasp his upper arm and pull. He crawls toward it as the crowd mercifully parts, gasping for breath and shaking from the unexpected assault. “Are you alright?” he hears his savior say, and looks up to see that it’s the fancy boy, his knees now also splattered with mud. “I saw the crowd push you down.”
“I’m okay,” Charles replies, because really, it’s only his hand that hurts. The boy had gotten him out before anything serious could happen. Plus he’s had way worse before. None of his ribs are even bruised. “Thank you,” he adds, because Mum would want him to remember his manners.
“Edwin!” the fancy woman calls, hurrying over and lifting the boy from the ground. “Oh, look at the state of you.”
“It is only a bit of dirt, Mother,” he answers, and it’s then that Charles puts it together. Edwin. Edwin Payne, the crown prince of the kingdom, and his mother, Queen Esme. Charles scrambles up so he can kneel in front of her and bow his head. It’s a good thing Mum insisted on teaching him etiquette, in case she ever got a job at the palace laundry.
“Your Majesty,” Charles stammers. He feels very, very small, and very, very poor.
“Who is this? Edwin, what were you doing with this boy?” she asks. “Did he push you down?”
“No! He fell and I helped him up,” Prince Edwin says. “The crowd was going to trample him.”
“Yes, it is quite the unruly mob,” Queen Esme sniffs and turns her back to Charles—Charles risks a glance up. She continues to lament the poor manners of the Port District as she leads Edwin toward the waiting carriage—Edwin looks back at him one last time and gives him a small wave. Charles waves back, and then the carriage door closes and the team of horses pull it away.
When Charles gets home, he’s completely forgotten to get his mum any meat pasties from Amanita. He tells her the whole story, start to finish, while she wraps his bruised hand and then has him strip off his muddy clothes.
Maybe when Dad gets home, if he’s not in too bad a mood, he’d like to hear it too. He’d probably laugh at the idea of the prince on his knees in the dirt beside Charles—seems like the sort of thing he’d like. As long as he doesn’t get too mad about Charles running around the docks, or being stupid enough to be crushed by the crowd, or giving the family a bad image in front of the royal family. On second thought, maybe it’s better to keep this one to himself.
And when Dad does get home, drunk on rum he bought with his newly-earned wages, and when he beats Charles for making a racket when Mum’s trying to rest, well, then, at least Charles still has the memory of Prince Edwin’s concerned eyes meeting his own, his sure grip on Charles’ shoulder and his knees just as muddy as Charles’.
The very next day, Charles hitches a ride to the palace on the back of the morning fish delivery cart, walks up to the barracks, and asks how he can get an apprenticeship training with the palace guards.
They laugh at him at first, a grimy little urchin with bruised knuckles and not much else to his name—but when one of them reaches out to shove him aside, and Charles instinctively dodges and cocks his elbow to return a hit, they stop laughing. He’s given a bunk in the novices’ barracks house and a dull, rusty sword, and told to report to training the next morning at dawn.
He spares a thought towards Mum, still stuck in their tiny house with Dad, her hands raw and cracked from hot water—but she’ll be okay. Dad never lays a hand on her, and if he does, then Charles can come back with his new sword and make him scared for a change.