Ch: 113 Air On A G String
Nara was sitting on the porch, enjoying a pot of catnip tea when the ducal guards arrived. She let out a soft mew of displeasure.
“Do not start trouble… your duke is already cross and unhappy.” She said, before the guard captain could speak. She vanished with an annoyed twitch of her tail, closing the door behind herself.
“Phillip said the duke was in a cathouse… I don’t think he knows what that means.” Alex said wryly, when the citizens finished escaping the inn yard.
“Disregard Phillip’s orders on my authority. If the duke needs our help, we give it. Otherwise, keep calm and don’t start anything, this is a very strange place…”
Julius Rummel, Duke of Port Clement stepped outside, dressed as a common laborer. He eyed them with a confusing mixture of familiarity, fondness and suspicion.
“Many of your families have served mine for generations… I am going to assume your loyalty henceforth. Please do not disappoint me.” Their liege said mildly.
“Please send a detachment to detain Phillip… gently. I have been made aware of a plot against me and wish to ask him if he knew of it. If any of you are involved this is your only chance to speak of it.”
Six anonymous figures in the brown light armor of ducal guards snapped to attention and remained silent.
“Excellent. Alex, please come inside. Sergeant Carrie, please bring Phillip to me… gently I remind you.”
#
“I will have you brought up before the court of Order! insubordination, treason, assault on a ducal officer, false arrest…” Sergeant Carrie snapped a silence collar around his neck with no small satisfaction.
Frogmarching a silenced Phillip through the town was a lifelong dream for most of the occupants of the palace. Carrie took personal charge of the prisoner, savoring every step.
Unfortunately, a pair of carters were tangled in the gate, forcing the poor fellow to be dragged through the uptown and market wards. Guardsman Jasper waved to his cousins, as they pretended to argue in the street, while not untangling their carts.
A malfunction of the market gate required another detour, through the docklands and gate market, the long way around.
Watching eyes and gossiping lips followed every humiliating, rumor spawning step of the way.
#
Carrie handed her prisoner off to Alex at the door to the strange house. “Take your ease in the common room, his grace is safe here. Don’t wear your boots inside, whatever you do.” He said, with strange intensity.
Commander Alex was out of uniform, having traded his muddy, battered armor for a fluffy green robe. “Yes sir… any further orders?” Carrie snapped crisply, she prided herself on being unflappable… but this was a lot for one day.
“None. At ease sergeant, at ease. I’m serious about the boots.”
#
Phillip was handed off to a young warrior with spiky black hair and an intense demeanor. The man firmly, but gently took him to a door and down a flight of stairs. In a workshop of some kind, the duke and the madman stood together.
“All right Phillip, strip.” The insane man said. Phillip tried to protest, only to let out a gentle wheeze through his collar.
“Remove that please Liam, I would hear his defense.” Julius said mildly. When the collar was removed, the man remained silent.
“Ok, get buck nekkid now.” Gary demanded again.
“I will not! You impertinent, wretched, nameless peasant! I’ll have you flogged in the market square as was done in days of old! I’ll have your indenture and make you my personal…”
“Remove your robes, cousin Phillip. That is an order from your liege.” Julius snapped, his voice cracked with a bit of fury, jarring the prisoner to his slipper soles.
Silently, face flushed red with shame and rage, the man started undoing his complex garments.
“It really does cinch around your dick and balls…” Gary muttered four minutes later. “His are cursed too, just like yours. If he’s in on it, he’s all the way in.”
“Phillip… did you know? Did you know these things were enspelled to torment, confuse and derange us?” Julius asked softly. “If we are victims together… but if you knew…”
“What madness is this?” He demanded, pulling his green flannel robe closer to his body, not simply to cover himself. The poor man was squinching his toes in a pair of fluffy sheep slippers like he was getting paid overtime for it.
“Return my regalia immediately! If you have some charge to make beyond this madness I would hear it or be set free! The court of Order will hear of this!”
Everyone was ignoring him and his complaints, but he was also very busy snuggling that robe and enjoying a very plush sofa.
“...So the person doing the ‘Gaslighting’ keeps telling the victim that they are going nuts, until they believe it and can even start to participate… there we get into ‘Stockholm Syndrome’... pretty complicated huh?” Gary was saying as he disassembled the enchanted bikini-thong-whip, stripping it for parts.
“Huh, that’s odd… all of these are the same… mass produced. There’s no individual stamp or sign of variation in any of these. Most crafters have a distinct style, the way they snub a knot or clip a thread.”
“What does that mean? They were all made by one person?” Liam asked, as he was picking silver threads out of a slipper.
“More likely not people, or people who have been so completely controlled they might as well not be. Dark doings in your capital boys. Somebody is up to some real fuckery.”
Gary pulled his comrade aside a little while later. “Hey, Liam… you and Jules take Phil upstairs, stick him in the private bath and see what he barfs up. Dunk Jules and the guards while you’re at it…” He grinned foolishly at his brother. “Make sure it’s the private bath, they need maximum strength.”
“Are they that different? I never noticed.” Liam murmured softly, watching Jules and Philip talk together on the sofa, like people.
“Oh yeah, that’s why I’m picky about who goes in the private bath… only things that are really a part of you can survive in it, like Luna’s eyepatch and Becky’s hair beads. They’re protected by the person’s Animus. Any outside influence or object gets washed away.”
“Cursed underwear explains a lot about the nobility…” Liam whispered as he went to collect his charges. “Come along gentlemen, you are in for a treat! Here, take a few puffs of this, it will make everything easier…”
Once they were alone, Ivy still wouldn’t explain the women’s underwear. “I’m not giving you any ideas… perve.” She smirked.
“You know, anything I imagine is likely worse than the reality…” He replied with a devious smile.
“Nope. I’ve been in your head.” She smirked
“Not for long and I hid my hentai collection.”
“What’s hentai?”
“Exactly.”
“You’re weird”
“So’s my hentai…”
“Gross… I think.”
#
Gary dragged up from the depths with Ivy, as seventh bell sounded. He hugged Shai and the kids when they sat down to dinner. “Crazy day today, tomorrow is going to be busy too.”
He looked up in surprise when Maisie swept by their table and served dinner. “What are you doing up and waiting tables? Geez, what kinda operation am I running?”
“Shush boy, I’m enjoying a moment’s peace. That ravenous monster will be demanding my attention soon enough… little Frankie too, no doubt.” She smirked.
“Hey!” Able griped happily, from his place by the fire with his baby.
#
In the realm of dreams, Ducky was less upset than Gary expected. “Watching you tear off parts of yourself and toss them around is becoming a bad habit. This time you managed to haunt yourself… how delightfully Gary of you.” He shook his head sadly. “At least you have stopped eroding into the void… for the moment.”
“Yeah, I’m terrible… I’m gonna go play with Shai and the kids… there’s no way I’m missing out on the important stuff so I can worry about anybody’s expectations… even yours, Ducky. I have a revolution to foment, I can’t do that safely.”
Thirp found the whole ‘shadow Gary’ episode hilarious and the magic underwear just puzzling.
“That is distressing. Human psychology seems particularly suited to such manipulation, your adaptability is a powerful tool, for good or ill.” She sang, watching Rio and Amy chase Wilford around the garden.
“Be patient with these people, they have been traumatized for generations.”
“Rich assholes have been doing this to poor folks even longer, Thirp. It’s kinda our thing, I gotta say, it’s really entertaining… in the abstract.” He chuckled darkly. “Usually we pick a powerless and vulnerable group to torment and abuse… like orphans. Nice to see someone mix it up.”
“Your people are very odd Gary… very odd indeed.” Thirp muttered as he slipped out into the garden, chasing his kids and that magical, jingling, laughing girl.
#
Gary woke and slipped away in the predawn hours, as usual. He wasn’t surprised by finding Julius and Philip sitting together by the fire chatting like a couple normal people. The unnatural rigidity and restraint they had both displayed seemed to be melting away… slowly in Phillip’s case.
Phil went on alert when he spotted his host on the stairs, watching him closely, as he went to the kitchen and started coffee. “You guys want some? Shai made apple fritter batter last night, just gotta put in the apples and fry it up.”
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“What’s a ‘fritter’? Another exciting new thing to try?” Jules asked giddily. “We’ve been awake all night, I feel ten years younger!”
“Dude… you’re younger than me.” Gary murmured sadly. “Did they make you wear that shit when you were little too?” He winced when they both nodded silently.
“Ok, that’s really messed up. So, you let them cinch your bits in a noose every day for your whole lives... Now what? You gonna take a stand? Or put your ballbags back on suicide watch?”
His frank and challenging gaze was enveloped in a cloud of sweet, yeasty steam when the batter hit the fryer. Soon the three were munching in silence, until Abel slipped in the door with a tired grin.
“Buddy! Jules, Phil, this is Abel, he’s a new papa… need some coffee bro?” Abel nodded and joined the table with a sigh while Gary fetched him a cup and a fritter.
“I saw the lights… and smelled the coffee. First milking comes early and Frankie doesn’t sleep.” He mumbled, red eyed and a bit listless.
“I’m all caught up in my shop… want some help?” He asked the sleepy goatherd. “Abel is in the dairy game, milk and cheese. He’s my landlord while we’re in town, so suck up to him. He’s pretty important in the ward.” Gary told the two men in workman's clothing, with a wink.
“Oh, excellent! It seems wise to meet all of the notables and important people in the town!” Jules said happily. “May we come along as well, I’ve never seen a goat farm before!”
“Sure… the more the merrier…” Abel muttered into his coffee. Gary finished up in the kitchen and came back, leaving a tray of fritters under a clean white cloth behind. They strolled out into the mist and fog beneath Abel’s pole lantern.
“Why are you in armor Gary… are you afraid of goats?” Phil asked, with mockery in his voice.
“You’ll see soon enough.” He answered, as the sound of excited bleating began in the near distance.
They passed through a high gate in a high hedge of coppiced and woven alder. Leaping goats barreled into the musician as soon as he entered the pasture. They leapt, cavorted and gamboled all around, nibbling and tugging at his armor wherever they could.
“Goats love Gary, it’s crazy, I've never seen the like.” The farmer muttered softly, while the big musician played with his flock.
“Yeah, it’s gonna get crazier Abel… I’ve been thinking.” With that cryptic comment, the madman pulled a stool out and sat down in the pasture. “Show Phil and Jules how it’s done, while I get the fluffy rascals to settle down.”
“You expect me to milk a goat?” Phillip asked in scandalized horror.
“It sounds like good fun! Besides, you already have goat pee in your sandals…” Julius said happily, as the music of a single flute rose into the morning fog.
“Ohh sweet gods! These were so comfy…!” The outraged nobleman cried.
“You know, goat piss is one of the main ingredients in my leather tanning formula… so you could say they were always soaked in it.” The musician said calmly, keeping up the music by drumming on his thighs and chanting his words in time.
#
“Dancing goats! Milk everywhere! Buckets and buckets of the stuff!” Julius was giddy at the breakfast table.
Abel and Maisie were there, happily eating with the gang. Franklin was tucked under a blanket on his mother’s lap, having breakfast as well.
“It was one of the strangest morning milkings of my career…” Abel agreed. “Fastest too, I never bought into that whole ‘flute playing goatherd’ trope, but maybe I should.”
“Sorry Abe, most of that comes from me… I can make you a magical instrument with some of the effects. It doesn’t have to be a flute, do you play anything?” Gary watched Abel’s eyes when he asked, watched them flick over to a mandolin hanging on his wall.
“No, I don’t, I couldn't…” The dairyman mumbled in embarrassment.
“Uhh huh… I have this problem Abel, I’m not legally allowed to trade, since I’m not legally registered with Craft and have no supervising master… so all this stuff, I have to barter it.” Gary complained. “Let’s call it an investment.”
“It’s a simple offer.” He gently slid Wilford off his lap and got up.
“We get to use this pasture when we come through town, you get a shiny mandolin, plenty of spare strings and lessons whenever we come by. You too Maise, flute, drum, maybe a bass? Frankie can tell me what he wants when he’s old enough.”
“You can really do that? Make a… ‘mandolin’ you called it, that can make my goats dance like that?” He asked in a hushed whisper.
“You’re friends with a mad sorcerer from beyond, your son was midwived by an immortal spirit of the fae and the duke milked your goats this morning… normal left town with no forwarding address bro.” Gary smirked.
Abel and Maisie chuckled along with the group, until the lovely young mother did the math on that statement…
“Jules…” Maisie began, very carefully, as she shifted Frankie to the other side. “What is your house, master Jules?”
“Rummel… house Rummel, Julius Rummel, duke of Port Clement and surrounds…” He murmured abstractedly, while braiding Amy’s hair. “I am having the most extraordinary week of my life…”
“Thank you Jules!” Amy chirped happily when she hopped out of the duke’s lap. “You're better at braiding than Gary, he always pulls my hair too hard.” She hopped over onto Maisie’s lap, pulling the sleepy, chubby boy into her lap for a snuggle.
#
Liam and Dannyl accompanied Julius back to the palace, while the duke’s bodyguards tried desperately to do their jobs. Julius had a taste of freedom and was all over the place.
If it looked good, he was going to taste it. If it felt good he was going to wear it. Out with the old and uncomfortable, in with a free and easy lower quarter.
“Let it be known, boxer briefs are the official undershorts of Port Clement. Phillip, find us a tailor, someone without curses. Valets, Phillip will find you some suitable employment.” He said as they walked.
He dipped his elegant and handsome profile into nearly every stall and booth they passed and spent a good portion of the walk licking his fingers.
“I will have to send out a proclamation, banning the regalia… that will not be popular with the conservatives.” Julius muttered sourly.
“Dude, proclamations are for douchebags…” Gary said, from right beside the duke. He had been there all along, softly playing his strange guitar… completely unnoticed.
“Ghaaa!!” Julius shrieked and leapt in his sandals. “Gary, curse you man! Thank the gods for my new shorts, I might have really hurt myself!” Julius waved his guards away. “No! Don’t skewer him… not until I find a new tailor.”
“He is always like this… your grace.” Liam said, hesitating on the title for only an instant.
“Yes, let’s keep it official in public. I should adopt that veil conceit of Tawny’s house.” He said softly to the young warrior, while the guards glared at the musician.
Gary strolled and strummed, whistling softly along with the strangely rhythmic sounds of the town.
“Forget proclaiming things. Your dukeness, I’ve been around town, your house is really respected and admired locally… even in the villages. People had no complaints… I hate to admit it, you guys run a pretty good operation.”
“Philip is an able and dedicated administrator… my skills lie… elsewhere apprentice Gary.” He said, with a tolerant smile. Julius put ‘Duke Julius Rummel’ on like an overcoat, the moment people started looking his way. He took a tone that suggested he was speaking to a simple child.
“Ok, I can work with that.” Gary muttered. “What I’m suggesting is that you find an actual tailor, someone good. Then start living your life, ban the torture shorts and cruel shoes, let fashion take care of the rest.”
Julius stroked his chin, a gesture that should have looked foolish on a handsome seventeen year old. It should have, but didn’t somehow.
“I thought you wise… at first, then I assumed you were a fool and quite mad… I had begun to suspect the answer was somewhere in the middle. Now I wonder again, you are delightfully odd. I don’t have a court jester at the moment…” The duke let the offer hang in the air for a while.
Sorry, I only follow,
the dread pirate Shai…
Julius took a breath and joined in, both men sang in harmony, duke and madman in chorus together;
It’s the way she dances….
Both men sighed happily, in rhythm and key, as he played a simple piece of music hall jazz, building the tempo up.
“Stop! No, stop it Gary, no big musical number… not in town.” Liam barked, spoiling the mood.
Gary’s gifts wilted like a garden under an early frost. A large flock of starlings and batlizards peeped and fluttered away when the magic unwound.
“Nice one Liam!” Dannyl cheered. “Orders from Shai. No more one man shows away from home, it’s the whole outfit or nothing.”
“Awww, but I got the itch… I need one…”
“What are they talking about, your grace?” Phillip asked quietly, during the strolling mayhem.
“Remember this morning when we were milking goats?” Julius grinned wickedly and made a very suggestive goat milking gesture… right in the public street.
“Oh gods, I’d hoped that was a fever dream… did we really sing and dance a song about three maids a milking?” Philip asked, in a hushed and scandalized whisper.
And they tossed their petticoats to and fro…
The duke sang softly to his cousin, giggling the way he did when they were little and he would lead his older cousin into some cheerful mischief.
Oh the wind blew high,
The wind blew low…
Gary caught the song, spun it around his fingers and scattered it up his fretboard with a whoop of excitement. Liam tried in vain to stop the runaway musician… finally he just surrendered and let it wash them all away.
#
“The ‘Cuckoo’s Nest’… bold choice your dukeness… Stop glaring at me Liam, Julius started it!” Gary chirped as they strolled through the palace.
“Like I was saying before you started singing silly, naughty songs…” Liam shot him a sour look for some reason. “If you were to throw a fancy dress ball, where the noble and influential guests are to come in common costume… I can arrange the perfect band.”
“Setting a new fashion is not that easy…” Julius began… until he noticed how many people on the street were smoking those buffoonish, long pipes the boy sold.
“... oh if you search around you might find them for sale here and there… I recommend the ones that light themselves.” An old timer was sagely advising a younger man on the front porch of an inn.
“Very well, Phillip, arrange a fancy dress ball, Gary will provide the band… invite… everyone. This should be rare fun, I’m feeling gregarious.”
#
They swept in the palace gate and took the front door by storm. Julius led the whole troupe, bodyguards, confused valets, Bathers, Phillip and a pair of young maids who got swept up by the excitement.
At the head of a grand marble staircase the duke stopped and kicked off his sandals. He tucked them in his sash, like the workmen did when strolling on the greensward.
Barefoot and with great caution, he stepped out onto a plush piled rug, running down a finely appointed hallway. He stopped and squinched his toes in the carpet with a look of utter concentration on his face.
“Nope, back to the slippers. The carpet is scratchy.” He looked disappointed, but also deeply satisfied. They marched down to his chambers and through a grand pair of double doors into a drafty, unwelcoming and cold suite of rooms.
It all had the kind of overtly fancy, deliberately overwrought and underthought embellishments one would expect.
A blank white marble fireplace was bracketed by a golden settee and sofa, with sleek lines, slender elegant legs and richly colored upholstery that felt like sitting on rocks.
Unpleasant chairs and tables that were always at the wrong height, no matter the person, rounded out the furniture. The bed was comfy enough, if stylistically tacky with gold leaf and abstract carving.
“None of this shit is enchanted… it’s just awful naturally. Your interior decorator might not be in on it, but they are terrible.”
In the wardrobe and changing room they hit paydirt. Every stitch of undergarments and all the shoes were cursed in the same despicable way.
“I’ll haul away and dispose of these things for you…” Gary mumbled happily, eyeing the gleaming riches strewn over the hideous garments.
“I Like you Gary, and you have been a huge help… but Phillip is going to tax that stuff as nautical salvage. Sixty percent to the duchy.” Julius sighed happily. “Ease Way village just had to contract out a very pricey hunt… your taxes will balance that nicely I think…”
The duke chatted amiably, seeming a much more mature man than he was, as they walked his familiar halls and he saw them with new eyes.
“…That’s the thing with a domain like this, a windfall here is all well and good, but someone is getting buffeted by that wind somewhere else.”
He shifted to speak with Phillip, seamlessly. “Most of this will have to go, I never realized how oppressive all these dead animals were…”
“Oh good… I didn’t wanna say anything… but dang, it’s pretty murdery in here.” Gary chimed in, playing a ukulele now.
Mounted heads, racks of antlers and jewel studded horns covered the walls, scattered liberally around, freestanding taxidermy animals and monsters filled every space with a creepy funereal vibe.
Not like a clean, healthy cemetary, but a dank and dismal crypt, locked in time and forgotten.
“This is all normal too… lemme try something.” Gary reached into his backside and pulled a tiny object out.
“You guys might wanna relax, cover your ears and think about puppies and kitties.”
He stood in the middle of a vast ballroom, empty, save for a chandelier of crystal and monster teeth. They really kept up the theme.
He brought a tiny hen’s egg sized whistle to his lips and played a soft, deafening noise that whispered that way an avalanche does and harmonized with the grinding of a dreamer’s teeth, locked in a nightmare.
It carried all the melody of a bag of silver bells and rusty horseshoes falling down a spiral staircase on its chill, shrill wind. They all shivered in their slippers, even the silent and hardened ducal guards.
When the awfully beautiful noise stopped screaming in their minds, the boy stood there listening for a long minute or three.
“Weird, your house isn’t haunted, not even a little. No specters, wights, ancestors, or shades, no fetches, not even brownies.” Gary said at last.
“Good, those all sound awful, well not the last one. But all the rest. No thank you.” Julius said with amused finality.
“Your house is spiritually dead, Jules. Mine feels the way it does, because it’s haunted as hell. No one is ever alone, no one is ever forgotten in my home.”
He shuddered and continued on, speaking half to himself. “This place is quite the opposite. Everything repels and denies, excludes and rejects. This is an unhappy home, you should fill it up with life and joy. Maybe some houseplants, Liam can hook you up.”
“I should speak with your gardeners as well…” Liam suggested, ‘cause he was a huge plant nerd with ulterior motives.
#
“...if this is a jest, it is in poor taste… your grace.” Jennah spoke clearly and calmly. As though she were not about to give her father a thorough chewing out.
“It is a crime to counterfeit the noble raiment. Doubly so for me, as I am now, ‘common as dockside mud’. Dear aunt Helene said what all of the family was thinking.”
“Jennah… Jenny, You know how I feel… tradition is a cord as biting and cruel as any. It seems that it is draped around us by ages long gone… but now I find it is a noose we tie around ourselves. Where we place it and how tight we tug it, is up to us.” He shifted comfortably on his new chair, too comfortably.
“Have you gone into rebellion against the painful panties?” His embarrassed smile told the tale. “Gods, I would rather cart nightsoil into the worm pits than shove that… never mind. I’m glad you are taking a stand for your… never mind.”
“It turns out the cursed things are really cursed, Tawny’s mad pet tumbled the game. That is why I want ersatz regalia… just in case. Tawny’s scroll said they were, ‘cursed and hexed to here and gone’. She has been hanging out with that hillwoman.” He chuckled.
“That hillwoman and your daughter are among the few things tying that poor mad creature to you. Respect those ties if you would make your puppet dance.” She whispered.
“Khan advises everyone to treat him like a large unfamiliar dog. Make friends, don’t try to take his toys away and he probably won’t bite…” She shook her head sadly.
“I think he is a housepet nearly gone feral, now Tawny has taken him in. Scold him, beat him, work him half to death, he will come back for more and curl up at your feet. I think, if you threaten his home, he will maul you until you are forced to kill him.”
“I will make you your garments… but remember, that madman is Tawny’s pet, not yours. Good day, Papa.”
Jennah left the ducal palace feeling very naughty indeed.
#