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The knight kicked Charles down the stairs.
Charles fell backwards, hard, the air knocked out of his lungs as he landed on cold and unnervingly slimy stone. Charles’ sword made a horrible scraping noise as it skittered into the darkness. The only light came from above, haloing the knight as he advanced down the steps towards Charles, his own longsword still clutched tightly in his hand.
A dungeon, Charles thought, for all the good it did him. He needed to move, get his sword. But the man was coming down the stairs, fast, and everything hurt, and Charles just needed a moment to catch his breath, and the most he could manage was a pathetic twitch of his fingers and a tilt of his head, to better watch his murderer’s advance.
Well. Maybe murderer was a bit harsh. They had broken into his castle, after all. Not that the distinction would make the slightest bit of difference where Charles was concerned, not once that sword came down.
The knight came down the last step, sword held high, and loomed over Charles’ prone form. His thin face was twisted upwards into something like amusement. Charles had the inane thought that his dad was going to be in a right mood about Charles getting himself killed in such a godsdamned idiotic way. Hadn’t even done the job, had he?
The knight raised his sword, and Charles screwed up his eyes, and he was going to die, and he felt small and wretched and scared and mostly very young and—
The blow hadn’t come.
Charles cracked open a tentative eye.
The knight jerked backwards. His own sword clattered to the ground as he scrabbled frantically against a length of chain, taunt against his throat. He made a horrible gurgling sound. Charles’ aching body finally let him spring into movement and he darted forward, grabbed the longsword, and pulled himself up, ignoring the ache in his back.
He held the sword out in front of him, and watched warily as the knight continued to choke. From his new position, he could just make out the gleam of two green eyes, set into a dirty face.
With a final gasp, the knight went limp. The chain around his neck went slack, and he crumpled to the floor, face down.
Charles found himself standing face to face with a lad who looked to be about his age. His eyes were bright and wide, and he was dressed in a tattered shift that looked like it might once have been white but which was, like the boy himself, now smeared with dirt and what looked ominously like dried blood.
The source of the chain was immediately obvious. The boy’s wrists were enveloped by thick manacles, chain links snaking back into the darkness behind him.
Charles blinked owlishly.
“You saved my life,” he said, after a moment. “I— why’d you do that?”
The boy looked down, avoiding Charles’ gaze.
“I did not want him to hurt you.”
The boy spoke in the crisp, precise tones of a highborn, utterly at odds with his disheveled appearance. He eyed the man’s fallen form. There was something molten in his eyes, angry and desperate and intimate. Then he looked back up at Charles.
“I— is he dead?”
His voice wavered a bit, the nerves of someone unused to hurting other people. However he’d ended up in this dungeon, Charles would’ve bet his sword it definitely wasn’t for murder.
“You know him?” Charles said.
The boy nodded.
“He— hurt you? Before?”
There was a moment of hesitation, and then the boy nodded again.
Charles inclined his head in acknowledgement, and drove his sword into the base of the man’s neck. There was a small spurt of blood. The man’s limbs spasmed, once, then went limp. He was dead now, at any rate.
The boy stared at Charles with those big, frightened eyes, mouth falling open into a little o.
Charles dropped to his knees, careful to avoid the corpse.
“You saved my life,” he said again. “M’lord. I am duty-bound to serve you in turn.”
He got back to his feet, only a little wobbly, considering, and pulled out his lockpicks as he did so. It wasn’t a skill his father approved of— not properly knightly— but it’d gotten Charles out of a fair few scrapes in his time.
Charles brandished his picks in the air with one hand and sheathed his sword with the other, in one gratifyingly smooth movement. He nodded towards the boy’s manacles.
“What do you say we start by getting those off you, yeah?”
The boy flinched a little when Charles approached him, but he held his hands out, and Charles’ picks made short work of the manacles, sending them clattering to the ground. His wrists were mottled with bruises underneath, like he’d been pulling against them. Charles swallowed, looked up at the boy’s face instead.
“I’m Charles Rowland. Squire.” he said. Well, sort of, but squire was close enough. “What’s your name, then?”
“Edwin,” the boy said softly. He didn’t give a family name.
“Well, Edwin,” said Charles. He retrieved his own sword off the floor behind him, and gathered both swords awkwardly into the crook of one arm. “I’ll wager it’s been too long since you last saw the sun. Let’s get you out of here, yeah?”
He stuck out his hand. The boy– Edwin– watched him wide-eyed, for a moment, then took it.
Charles led them up the stairs, and tried not to worry too much about what his dad would have to say about all this.
They found Charles’ father in the castle hall, the rest of his men behind him, herding the castle’s servants into nervous submission. Charles’ Da was wiping the blood off his sword, a finely-dressed corpse at his feet. Charles looked nervously over at Edwin. He didn’t think the other boy would have much loyalty to the lord of the castle, what with the whole being locked in the dungeon and all, but you never knew. Edwin stared at the corpse, expression flat.
“Lord Sa’al,” he said quietly.
Charles nodded.
“Queen’s orders,” he said, by way of explanation. Sa’al had been the Queen’s Spider— spymaster, torturer, and all-round unpleasant to get on the wrong side of. They’d clearly had a falling-out of some kind, though, for Esther to send Charles and his Da after him. Paul Rowland wasn’t a knight, any more than Charles was a proper squire. Common sellswords, them and all the others, not that you’d have known it to look at Charles’ Da. When Queen Esther herself had started to give them her dirty work to do, Paul had taken all of Charles’ Ma’s savings, the money she’d gathered to go visit her family across the sea, and used it to buy himself a proper fancy sword, proper fancy armour, certain a knighthood was round the corner. It hadn’t happened yet, though. Usually Paul decided that was somehow Charles’ fault. Privately, Charles had his doubts. He knew better than to voice them.
“Charles,” Paul Rowland said, an edge of irritation already clinging to his voice. “Where have you been?”
“Killed one of Sa’al’s knights,” Charles said, chipper as he could manage. He chucked the man’s longsword on the ground, let it come to a clatter next to the corpse. “Got a bit held up, sorry—”
Charles’ dad made a low grunting noise, already ignoring him. His eyes flicked over to Edwin. If he hadn’t already been in a mood, the sight of the other boy didn’t help. His mouth drew into a thin, hard line.
“Doesn’t look much like a knight to me. Doesn’t look particularly dead, either.”
Edwin did look worse in the light, to be fair. The filth he was covered in was even more striking, and he was too thin, with a sallow cast to his skin. His hair was overlong and matted. It was hard to say whether the dark circles under his eyes were from exhaustion, or the remnants of bruising from his crooked, recently broken nose, still slightly swollen. The bend in Charles’ own nose, from a time he’d managed to anger his father enough to strike him in the face, twinged in sympathy. Still, Edwin held himself ramrod straight, jaw tight.
“We were sent here with a purpose, Charles,” Paul continued. “You should have been by my side, helping me take the castle. What need does Queen Esther have for some dungeon wretch?”
“My name is Edwin Payne,” Edwin cut in briskly, in that crisp, highborn accent. “Eldest son and heir of Lord Eddard Payne. I have been the Spider’s— political hostage, for some years.” He inclined his head towards Charles. “I am most grateful to your son for freeing me. If you were to see me home to my Lord Father, I am certain that he would compensate you handsomely.”
Charles vaguely knew the name Payne, a minor family of nobles from the North. He knew they’d backed the wrong side of the failed uprising against Queen Esther. Esther had let most of her enemy houses live, but she’d taken out her ire on their heirs— a network of hostage children, scattered across the realm. That had been what, seven years ago now? In the light, Edwin certainly didn’t look to be any older than Charles’ own seventeen summers. Charles thought of a ten year old Edwin, shackled in that dungeon, in the dark, and felt faintly ill.
Paul Rowland stared at him, his expression inscrutable.
“The Paynes are dead,” he said, bluntly.
Edwin’s dirty face crumpled in shock.
“I— what?”
Charles’ father hiked up his shoulders in a weary shrug.
“Couple years back. Some royalist family, looking to claim their castle. Supposed the Queen wouldn’t want to waste her resources on avenging a house of would-be traitors. Supposed rightly. The Moulds, I think they were called.”
By the look that flickered across Edwin’s face, this was not an unfamiliar name.
“All of them?” He asked, voice very small. “The children?”
“All of them, so far as I know,” Paul said gruffly. “I am sorry for it. It was not— honourable. Come, Charles.”
He strode away through the hall. Charles shot Edwin, who suddenly looked very small, a look that he hoped signalled both sorry and I’ll be back soon, and scurried after him.
Honour, or at least the appearance thereof, was the would-be Ser Paul Rowland’s guiding principle, the thing he believed would eventually transform him from common sellsword to proper knight. What you did to your own son behind closed doors whenever he upset your image, though, Charles thought bitterly, because sometimes what was honourable bloody well wasn’t what was right, that was his own business.
“We have to help him,” Charles said, once they were out of earshot, in a little antechamber. “Take him with us.”
“We have to do no such thing,” Paul said. “We cannot feed another mouth. Besides, where would we take him? His kin are dead. He’ll have been pampered as a child, then grown up in a dungeon. He is of no use to us.”
Charles set his jaw.
“He saved my life,” he said fiercely. “That knight had me, and Edwin pulled him off. You care so much about honour? I owe him a debt.”
Paul regarded him coolly.
“You freed him. I killed his captor. We owe him nothing.”
“Like you said,” Charles said, temper rising. “He’s got no family, no money, and he’s been locked up for years. What do you think is going to happen to him if we leave him here?”
Paul glowered back. Charles had inherited his temper from him, after all.
“What would you have me do, Charles? Take him back to the Queen? He’s still her hostage, even if there’s no-one left for him to be held hostage against. Better for everyone if we leave him here.”
“But—”
“That is my final word on the matter. We’ll sleep here, and ride out at dawn. Raise this with me again, and perhaps your precious lordling will spend a final night in that dungeon. And you with him.”
Paul strode off, probably to set up camp with his men. Charles wandered back over to Edwin, who stood where they’d left him, studiously avoiding eye contact with either the other sellswords or the palace servants.
“Hey, mate,” said Charles, plastering on what he hoped was a chipper grin. “What do you say we see about getting you a bath?”
The two of them set up camp in one of the castle’s freshly disused bedchambers, modest in size but nicely decorated, with finely embroidered tapestries on the walls.
Charles had made a fire and then drawn a bath, firmly ignoring Edwin’s attempts to help, and then perched himself on the dark wooden frame of a heavy four-poster bed, legs dangling off the end, as he listened to the quiet splashing sounds of Edwin washing behind him.
“How’s it going, mate?”
“Finally getting somewhere, I believe.” They’d had to change the water once already. “Though my hair may be a lost cause.”
“I can give it a trim, if you like,” Charles offered.
“Would you?” Edwin said. “Oh— you can turn around, if you’d like. The water is filthy enough to avoid any— indecency.”
Charles obligingly did so, pushing himself off the bed to kneel behind the tub. Edwin was right— the water in the bath tub had gone a murky brown, all that was visible above it the sharp swoop of Edwin’s collarbones and the white points of his knees. The ragged ends of his dark hair just brushed the surface of the water, and Charles pulled his smallest, sharpest knife from his belt, and got to work cutting through the tangles of hair so that it fell no further than the nape of Edwin’s neck. It was nice work, methodical, and Charles enjoyed feeling the dry give of the hair against his blade. Dark tendrils fell into the water around Edwin’s shoulders, revealing a lattice of scars. Charles kept his eyes politely averted, and didn’t ask. He wouldn’t have wanted anyone asking about the scars on his back, neither, and those didn’t come from anything so dramatic as being a hostage.
“I’m sorry,” Charles said, after a while. “About your family.” Hopelessly inadequate words, but they were all he had to offer, really.
“I— it is foolish, I suppose,” Edwin said, after a moment, hugging his knees to his chest. “But I had this notion that I wanted to look my father in the eye, and tell him everything that had been done to me. Every indignity that I had suffered.” He sniffed. “I know it was meant to be a punishment for those who rebelled, but I was ever a disappointment to my father. If the worst he had to endure was not laying eyes on me, then it was a price he was happy to pay. But at least I could believe I was— enduring it for something.”
“You said— the children?”
Edwin ducked his head.
“My siblings,” he said quietly. “Two sisters, and my younger brother.” He made a terrible choked sort of sound. “I thought I had made peace with the fact that I should never see them again. In some wretched, selfish way, it is almost as though nothing has changed, so I do not understand why I feel so…”
He broke off with a sniff that teetered dangerously close to becoming a sob. Charles opened and closed his mouth a few times, frozen in position, kneeling behind the bathtub with his little knife still in hand. He felt suddenly very aware of the ungainly, unhelpful heaviness of all his limbs. Charles prided himself on being a sociable sort of lad, good with others. It was dismaying to realise this did not equate to knowing what on earth to say in the face of that.
“I’m sorry,” he said, again, uselessly. Then: “Come on. Let’s get you dressed.”
They were both quiet as Charles helped Edwin out of the tub, gave him a fur to dry himself off with. Charles averted his eyes as much as he could, out of awkwardness as much as politeness, catching the odd flash of white limbs in his peripheral vision as Edwin dressed himself in the blue tunic and brown britches Charles had dug out of his own pack for him. They were nothing fancy, just plain old spun wool, simpler than Edwin’s station merited, but they’d be soft, and warm, and Charles was pleased he could give Edwin at least that much. Charles hadn’t done too bad a job of cutting Edwin’s hair, either: it fell about his ears in soft, dark waves. Edwin still looked a bit wan, his eyes red-rimmed and his nose crooked. But without all the dirt and grime, skin pale and back ramrod-straight, hands clasped carefully in front of him, he looked more like a proper lordling. Albeit a lordling who’d been thrown from his horse. Or was recovering from a bout of illness.
When Edwin was finished, they both piled into the room’s big four-poster bed, covered in a heaped pile of furs and blankets, a polite measure of distance between them. Charles leant his sword against his side of the bed, just in case, and slid a knife under his pillow.
Edwin watched him quietly, and ran his fingers over the pattern embroidered on the coverlet.
“It has been a terribly long time since I last slept in a proper bed,” he said at last, breaking the silence.
“He kept you in that dungeon all that time?” Charles said, unable to keep the outrage out his voice. “When you were a child?”
Edwin shook his head.
“Lord Sa’al did not always treat me so dishonourably. He was– almost kind, at first,” he said, a curiously dispassionate note to his tone, like he was describing something that had happened to someone else. “I suppose things changed when– it happened. No-one left to be held hostage to. Not that I understood at the time. I simply thought that I had done something to disappoint Sa’al, as I was wont to disappoint my father. Though my father would never have treated me so abhorrently, in truth.”
Charles, who knew all about disappointing his own father, stayed quiet.
“I am sorry,” Edwin said after a moment. “It has been a long while since I had anyone to talk to. I fear I was never much good at it in the first place, and now I have quite lost the knack. I shall stop– yammering on. I am sure you are tired.”
“No!” Charles said, slightly too loud and slightly too fast. “I’m glad you’ve got me to talk to, mate. I don’t really have any friends my own age in my Da’s company. ‘S nice, talking to you. It’s just– all so bloody awful, what’s happened to you, that’s all.”
“Friends,” Edwin repeated, almost shyly.
“Well, if you’d like to be.”
“I have certainly lost the knack of making friends. If ever I had it.”
“Well,” Charles said, cheerily. “We’ll just have to practice together, then, won’t we?” He was a bit short on friends himself, as it happened, after the whole lake thing. Not that there was any need to bring all that up to poor Edwin.
“How does one go about this friendship business, then?” Edwin asked, one corner of his mouth quirking up.
“Saving the other bloke’s life is usually a pretty solid start, I’d say,” said Charles.
Edwin looked flustered again.
“You saved me, really,” he said.
“You saved me first,” Charles said firmly.
They lapsed into silence.
“What are you most excited to do?” Charles asked, scrambling to find something he could say to Edwin that wasn’t either utterly dismal or pointlessly empty. “Now that you’re out, I mean.”
“Read,” Edwin said at once, eyes gleaming. “I have missed books very terribly. Though I worry I’ve lost the knack.”
“I’m sure you haven’t, mate,” Charles said. “You’re dead clever, I can tell.”
“How would you possibly know?” Edwin said. But he gave Charles another wonderful little smile.
They were quiet again for a moment.
“Where will you go next?” Edwin asked.
Charles immediately felt guilty again. He shrugged.
“Back to the Queen. Then wherever the work is, s’pose.”
“You are— knights?”
“Sellswords, really,” Charles said, bashful. “My Da thinks Queen Esther’ll make him a knight, if he keeps doing what she tells him, but— I dunno. Seems to me there’s some jobs better off being done by a no-name sellsword than a knight.”
Edwin made a considering little noise in the back of his throat.
“It seems to me perhaps you are the clever one.”
Charles felt the tips of his ears heat up, suddenly self-conscious. He’d never told anyone about that before. He’d had no-one to tell, really. The sons of his father’s men, the only people around who were roughly his own age, weren’t exactly the type for thoughtful conversation, and that had been even before the incident last year. Edwin was proving to be remarkably good company, and kind, and it just made Charles feel all the more wretched.
“My Da doesn’t want to take you with us,” Charles admitted.
Edwin shot him a small smile.
“I had thought as much,” he said, perfectly calm. “I am only sorry not to be your friend for longer.”
“I’m sorry,” said Charles, wretched. “I tried to convince him, but—”
“Truly, it is all right,” Edwin said firmly. “You have already done— more than I could have asked of you.” He looked at Charles, his eyes shining. “Tomorrow I shall see the sun.”
That made Charles’ chest ache a bit.
“But— where will you go?” he asked. Maybe Edwin had some other relative he could go home to.
Edwin tilted his head, considering.
“The other hostages,” he said after a moment. “I should like to make sure they are being well-treated.”
Charles blinked.
“And— if they aren’t?”
“If they aren’t,” Edwin said carefully, “then I suppose I should like to do something about it.”
“Interfereing with the Queen’s hostages is treason,” Charles said.
“Yes.”
“It’ll be dangerous.”
“Yes.”
“D’you have a sword? Come to that, d’you even know how to use a sword? ”
Edwin shrugged.
“I am sure I shall manage without.”
“Right,” said Charles. “Well. That settles it. I’m coming with you.”
It was Edwin’s turn to look surprised.
“Certainly you will do no such thing,” he managed after a moment.
“I have a sword,” Charles pointed out. “Know how to use it, and all. If you’re set on running into danger, someone ought to keep you out of trouble.”
“As I say, you have already done— more than enough. I could not ask this of you.”
“Not asking, are you? I’m telling.”
That got him a tentative smile.
“You are— very noble, Charles. But oughtn’t you to stay with your father? Help him?”
No-one had ever called Charles noble before. It made his chest tingle a bit. Maybe this was why his dad got so wound up with all that honour bollocks.
Right, yeah. His Da.
“He’s a hard man, my father,” Charles said, carefully. “I love him, but I can’t… I won’t tag along with him forever. It’s more of an abrupt goodbye than I’d planned, but—” Charles shrugged, and felt the old scars on his back pull. “I think it’s what I need to do.”
He hadn’t realised, until the words came spilling out, quite how true they were. Charles was excited, he realised. The thought of travelling round the kingdom with Edwin, rescuing the Queen’s hostages, made the world feel bright and big and open in a way that killing Esther’s enemies, endlessly doing his Da’s bidding, never had. Maybe they could even rescue themselves a pair of beautiful highborn ladies. He could half-see their future, shimmering vividly. If only Edwin would let him tag along.
“For what it’s worth,” Edwin said gently, “I think you would make a wonderful knight.” He sniffed. “You are certainly a great deal more chivalrous than that brute in the dungeon you saved me from.”
“Cheers, mate. But you saved me from him first, remember? And— you’ve been locked up and treated horribly and despite all that the first thing you want to do is go and help other people. I’d be daft not to go with you.”
Edwin flushed, ducked his head, and Charles knew he almost had him.
“Besides,” Charles added, “I want to see you see the sun.”
Edwin stared at him for a moment, his eyes very bright.
“Oh, very well,” he said, every inch the put-upon lordling. “If you must.”
“I must,” Charles said cheerily, and stuck out a hand. Edwin reached across the coverlet and took it.
By daybreak, they were gone. Charles wanted to show Edwin the sunrise.