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Eric’s always been the King’s chef; he remembers sleeping in the pantry as a child, showing the elderly man who’d been the cook before how to expertly chop a potato.
His Grace isn’t just cooking , no matter what Randa told the other kings; he’s Randa’s personal poison-tester, has been ever since he first knocked the king’s glass from his hand at a revel when he was seven. He doesn’t expect to ever leave the castle, so he takes the time between meals sitting at windows or tugging at the chain connecting him to Randa’s kitchen. It’s only undone when Randa wants to eat and calls for him. There are rings set into the floor in every dining room and the king’s chambers just for such an occasion. He’s too useful to ever be given leave of the castle, even just for a walk.
--
Lady Katsa has always been kind to him. He knows she pities him for his chains, and she is always the one he informs when someone is trying to poison another, because she can be very discrete. When she announces her intentions to leave, he panics a little. Who else will speak to him? Who else will let him sit in companionable silence for hours without question, or let him put his arms around them for comfort? Eric is being left behind, he knows, as surely as Randa is in this moment.
--
She returns with a group of guards, people of all sizes and inclinations, and when she dines at Randa’s table again, the king is too frightened and angry to dissuade her. She scowls at Eric’s rings and when he is brought in to test their food she motions to him. “I see you still keep your Gracelings like slaves,” she says, and Eric pauses, puzzled. She says it as though it’s something unusual, like they all aren’t treated, to some degree, in this way. Jorea the maid wears a collar to keep her from speaking because her voice makes you weep with joy or sadness, and she once refused to sing for the king. Aden the stable-master’s assistant wears bells in his ears so that all will hear him coming. Eric’s own chains are some of the worst, but they’re all treated this way.
Randa puffs his chest. “ You will never understand the pressures of being king, girl ,” he says with a sneer, and Eric remembers something Prince Raffin had said to his servant Bann the other night at dinner, something about his elderly, ailing father and the new medicines he was preparing.
He tests the king’s soup and knows immediately that Raffin has put something in his father’s soup, something to cause sleep and delusions and eventually, a painless death. His eyes shoot to Lady Katsa’s and she watches him with hawk’s eyes, calculating. He smiles to the king and allows himself to be moved around the table by the servant with a hand on his leash. When he’s tested everyone’s food, the end of the leash is clipped to the ring in the floor near the king’s chair. He kneels quietly, attentively, letting his mind wander into a sort of haze. He gives it ten minutes before the king’s mind begins to film over and he collapses into his soup.
--
They shake him awake and Katsa pulls him into her arms, her tall, limber frame easily picking up his small body and tucking his head underneath her chin. One of the servants is being briefed by one of the guards; the boy’s coral-and-bronze eyes are blinking rapidly and filling with tears. He reaches for one hand with the other and Eric realizes he is wearing thick gloves to prevent him using them. The boy’s Grace is climbing; climbing walls, trees, anything that will stay still long enough.
Prince Raffin is there when he wakes up for the second time; he’s bare underneath the blankets, his ankles, wrists, and neck rubbed raw from shackles and a collar that he’s worn for years. Katsa looks furious, and behind her, the guards she came with look as though they’re contemplating another murder.
“King Raffin,” he rasps, and Katsa leaps to his bedside like an animal possessed. The new king laughs.
“Ah, - what was your name? I don’t think I’ve ever heard it.” Says Raffin, easily smiling down at him.
“Eric,” he says, and the king continues, “Well, Eric, I am happy to say that I have abdicated the throne to my cousin, as she is surely a better ruler than I could ever be.”
Eric looks at him for a few moments, thinking, before replying, “So it is still Prince Raffin and Bann, and Queen Katsa?”
“Yes,” says the taller one, Bann. “It is.”
--
Dirt is spongy, he learns, in between the toes. It’s cool and calming, but is also the source of the word ‘dirty’. Playing in the dirt leaves him unclean, meaning he has to bathe, and he is not yet strong enough to wash himself. It ends in Katsa accompanying him into the washroom and helping to hold him steady while she and Helga assist him in washing.
However, as nice as that feels, it leads to an unpleasant episode with one of Randa’s old guards accusing the queen of keeping him as a lover. Eric almost laughs; the idea of him and Katsa together in that way is almost as foreign as Prince Po, the queen’s real lover. Eric has already told them he prefers the male form, and Katsa has yet to find anyone appealing besides Po, so it works between them. Sometimes Po will join them or wait outside the baths, and it isn’t as awkward or strange as some of the guards believe it to be. It’s just them.
--
Of course, Katsa is a busy queen, devoted to not just the well-being of her queendom but of all the other’s as well, so often she must go to other places to help them. This leaves Eric in the capable, if unfamiliar hands, of Katsa’s foreign Lienid guards. His trembling isn’t from the strength of his limbs but from stress and anxiety and years in a prison-like setting, as Katsa has explained to them all, but he knows they’re still surprised when they see him again.
They try to be kind to him. They all go for walks, and he learns that they are all themselves Graceless and find it all fascinating, and that they had no idea the Graced were so unappreciated, and Eric smiles and introduces them to Jorea, who has regained her lovely voice, and Aden, who continues to wear the bells, but adorns them with shining glass and riverstones. They tour the city together, learning its alleys and secret streets, and they cheer him up enough that they decide that even when Katsa and Po have returned, they will be his guards.
--
There are still Randa’s old supporters in Katsa City, raging against the sudden support for the Graced and the ousting of the old power Randa had given their families. Katsa favors none over the other in her queendom; she hires people who will be judicious for her judges, capable people for her craftsmen, and wise people for her advisors.
But still, these upset people exist, and on one of Eric’s walks, they take one look at the differing blues in his eyes and grow bold. One stalks forward to attack him, and Eric, caught off guard, is surprised when Ransom and Holster flip the man onto his back. They stand above the shocked civilian and growl at him, “That one’s ours,” and Eric feels the edges of his guard step closer, tightening the net of protection around him.
He smiles down at a woman’s wares in the stalls and leans his head on Jack’s shoulder, as he is the nearest, and breathes in the scent of the outside. Tonight, he decides, he will bake something especially for his guard in celebration.