Ch: 260 Doin’ It All For My Baby
Preparations for the feast of Light were pretty simple, in most parts of town. Only those in the cult of that spirit went for garlands of twinkling magical lights. Those few enchanted strands were ancient family heirlooms and needed recharging by a cleric or Cultivator with the appropriate gifts every season… usually.
This season even the dusty, tired relic in Harlan’s attic shone bright and clear, winking as he strung it around the shop, to honor his son and daughter’s bonds to the spirit. He’d sent Thom running at dawn to ask if Shai’s fool boy had the knack for charging relics… only to find him unneeded.
The huge smith smiled and chuckled as he worked, pinning the lights up around his eaves and reflecting on the year they’d all had. He and Amelia were firmly in copper rank now and cultivating for bronze with slow, steady progress. The work and discomfort were paying off… with a distinct slimming of his midsection and the very beginnings of growth in hers. That was the real reason he’d sent Thom to fetch Shai and her fool… a celebration of so many new things and a new child coming by winter’s ending.
The clatter of a wagon and his neighbor, cheerfully whistling as he drew back the shutters on his carpentry shop were brighter and seemed brand new this morning… shiny and gay in the sun’s blessed light.
The giant leapt from his ladder with startling grace and gave a huge embrace to his entire, slowly waking neighborhood, stretching his arms wide in Joy’s blessed name.
“Master Harlan…” The duke said cheerfully, from behind his false ‘stache and ridiculously long pipe. “I need your help… I need your daughter and her madman back at work.” He said bluntly, right there in his dooryard.
“If it’s my pal Leo askin’... I’d say he should mind his business, cause tis twixt the duke, the council an me sweet daughter an her friends.” He grumbled mildly.
“An t’were his grace askin’, I’d say nae. Fer tis me kin I’d side wi in almost any case, save she be clearly wrong…”
“Master Harlan, as a concerned citizen, speaking to a member of clergy…” Leo began again.
He looked the poorly disguised duke in the eye and smiled. “Kin ye honestly say that they are wrong on the facts of the matter, lad? T’was me own grandbairns… so I do say, me own blood kin, stolen away from home an hearth…”
“I need them, Harlan. We need them, all of us.” He muttered sourly. “It’s bigger than any single person!”
“Aye, it is, an that’s why it vexes ye. An he pressed fer his own freedom, Shai’s boy would be sitting pretty an free ta work his will… Tis that he called yer whole dirty mess intae the light that hae ye flummoxed an put out.” The giant grumbled at his duke. “Yer own self could hae, should hae made these very complaints an won free, an ye could hae seen it. That is true of each lad an lass in every orphanage!” He kept his voice low, even as his temper ran high. “An yer law kinnae stand against one… how then, does it hold tae the rest?”
“You are in the trade association, you have at least an inkling of how complex the world is…” Leo insisted. “Coal, Iron and clay we have, lumber and agriculture… What else can we trade in but warriors?” He muttered.
“The lands of men must be defended… or all is lost. They are the price we must pay! I paid that price, as did all my brothers and sisters!”
That brought Harlan up cold. “Ye paid the price, true. It’s been paid again an again, by so many fer so long… maybe tis finally paid in full?” The giant shrugged. “Many work in Adventure, free lancers, road guards an Adventure bands free sworn an beholden tae only the law an their guild.” He grumbled.
“A price must be paid in blood, perhaps those free tae choose may offer their steel an flesh. I’ve gone hunting monsters… most craft masters hae.”
“There’s a difference between casual monster hunting and what we face on the fringe…” Leo snapped at the big man.
“Kin we nae find the courage in folks fully grown, or must we continue tae hide behind wee bairns wi trembling spears?” Harlan looked down at the lord on his doorstep and sighed.
“Tis young Liam’s case comes aforetime any wise. That should be yer focus. Gary be nae up fer indenture til a year an slightly more.” He grinned even wider. “That’s it, entirely! Ye would hae this whole thing rumbling along, ere young Liam comes due an kinnae be bound!”
“Shh!” The duke hissed. “Gods, I just realized we’re standing in the bloody street!”
Harlan preened and took another massive stretch. “I dinnae hae truck wi the god of Secrets… His cleric be a right pain in the arse. Ol’ Harlan deals plain an in the light o the glorious sunshine this day. Come, walk wi me tae me daughter’s home, an we deal wi them fairly. I be a duly sworn member of the trade association after all!”
Leopold Belen, duke of Wheatford and surrounds followed the huge smith through the craft ward and across the bridge, into all the things he could have imagined going wrong, plus a few startling surprises.
#
When Becky and Gabbie finally came downstairs, Gary and all the kids were in the public bath together, singing along with a horde of local children, amidst a flotilla of small, yellow objects that squeaked when grasped and squeezed. Scores of bobbing yellow ‘duckies’ floated around among the children, who giggled and sang along to the chorus.
Rubber duckie joy of joys,
When I squeeze you, you make noise!
Rubber duckie you're my very best friend it's true,
Oh, every day when I make my way to the tubby…
I find a little fellow who's cute and yellow and chubby!
Rub-a-dub-dubby
Rubber duckie, you're so fine,
And I'm lucky that you're mine!
Rubber duckie, I'm awfully fond of you…
At the sound, Gabbie perked up and dashed for the public baths. She hadn’t ever really seen them before, the empress had lost interest when Shai explained that they were open to all.
Now she stepped through the hedge and gaped at the wide steaming pool and open garden, teeming with people. Strollers in robes or common clothes, sunbathers sprawled on the lawn and so many children splashing, running and diving.
A steady stream of shivering children led from the boat dock and deep, cold pool where Falco swam and played with a group of kids, to the hot baths… And back again to play with the chirping, chattering creature of the deep.
It was the naked musician singing a silly ‘ducky song’ to a small crowd of his own and other people’s kids in the bath that arrested her attention.
He strummed a strange kind of fretted shamisen, with a big round body and five strings, of all things. The instrument thrummed and rang under his flicking fingers, tapping out a sweet tune.
His confident, casual, attitude seemed to infect the kids as he led the group in song, somehow pushing his chorus of children to the fore with some subtle arts.
Oh, every day when I make my way to the tubby,
I find a little fellow who's cute and yellow and chubby!
Rub-a-dub-dubby!
Rubber duckie, you're so fine,
And I'm lucky that you're mine!
Rubber duckie, I'd like a whole pond of,
Rubber duckie, I'm awfully fond of you!
Becky stood in wonder, as the empress threw her head back and belted out the finale of a song from another time, another world. A song she could never have heard… on this world.
“All right, you can keep her, Becks.” Gary said with a smug grin, while Gabbie giggled and bounced on her toes he started to say something else, while the music shifted.
“You know ‘Rubber Duckie!?” Gabbie squealed in absolute giddy joy.
An instant later, there was a twanging, ripping crash, as Gabriella Rex, Empress of Light and Pontifex Obscura, tacklehugged a nude commoner into his own shrubberies. She blasted into the naked musician, smashing his instrument between them as she shrieked something incomprehensible into his chest.
Her guardian sat startled for only a moment, before dashing to her side with nearly supernatural speed. He fended the battered and confused, naked man away from his empress as gently as he could, using the precise amount of violence needed for the situation…
Since this must be the one who had hurt his empress, he applied himself to the task with gusto. Knowing this witch’s powers now, he focused on damage, rupturing the spleen, the femoral artery and the carotid. His precise strikes should create minute tears in those internal structures, bringing certain death within minutes…
#
The kids loved ‘Rubber Ducky’ but he couldn’t conjure the needed toys in the private bath, they just vanished immediately. Out on the public side, if he really worked at it, he could keep them floating for the whole song… and a little more now, cause’ cultivation!
He had the kids wrapped up tight and singing in chorus, while Tawny’s tummies were in the private bath, doing… pregnant lady stuff.
He was startled, when Becky and Gabbie appeared at the gate and the empress dove right into the song with zero hesitation she slipped right in, like she knew the number by heart. He tossed her the lead on the outro, letting her fine, clear voice ring off the sky and stones in perfect time and key. The kid could really blow! His wandering fingers, already headed for ‘Bare Necessities’, just for Amy and the boys. They couldn’t resist that one!
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“All right, You can keep her, Becks. Gabbie’s got some pipes…!” He called, as the music spun on.
Something fast moving and dressed in blue and violet crashed into his torso like a linebacker, dashing the breath from his lungs and sending his banjo into intensive care.
While he was struggling with the slim, pretty girl in flowing purple skirts who was trying to strangle him with his banjo strap… by hugging him to death, someone else joined the melee.
Hard, small hands struck him in the neck, shoulder abdomen and groin from seeming nowhere, sending pain through his body.
A compact, muscular, black haired form in dark clothing grabbed his limp form and hip flipped him and the remains of his beloved banjo into the bath, with a soft, apologetic, martial arts shout.
All the rubber duckies vanished with a doleful quack and the scent of toast and strawberry jam, as kids shrieked and fled the sudden, confusing… violence? Gary sputtered and groaned to the surface looking very cross, bruised and otherwise unharmed.
“Gabbie, Jocomo!” Becky shouted in horror, while Shai came running from the common room clothed, and suddenly armed with her swords, plucked from her dimensional gift. She dashed around the pool, towards the fracass looking furious.
#
Jocomo knelt down between the raging giantess and his empress, offering his neck to this woman once more. “My life is forfeit, I’ve slain your man… again.” He murmured with relief, as her blades flickered into being in her hand.
“Ye’ve what?” She asked coldly.
“He cannot survive. No healing art can save him. Take my head and share what little time he has remaining.” The assassin murmured awkwardly.
“Really, it’s against tradition to even force me to ask, barbarian. Please… take your vengeance.”
No fatal strike arrived… After a time he spoke again, still in the penitent's pose, awaiting her steel.
“I thought my ‘barbarian’ crack would do it for certain…” He complained. “You really are dishonorable savages, making me wait like this.”
“Bro…” The dead musician’s shade said calmly. “You are seriously messed up…” He looked up to find the man, dressed in a green bathrobe, seated on a bench nearby, enjoying a cup of tea with a very furious Becky, Gabbie and Shai.
“I’m disappointed that you tried to kill me… again. In my house, as my guest.” The witch Gary Ward said calmly. “My woman really wants to take that head of yours, but I’ve laid claim to your dome. It’s mine. Right Gabbie?”
His empress refused to look at him, as was proper; she only nodded tersely and sipped her tea in silence. “That means I am in charge of your fate.” He smiled a mad, crooked smile and sighed. “What do you think I should do with you?”
“I should be slain, by whatever means you wish.” He answered flatly. “As swiftly or slowly as needed to satisfy you.”
“Gabbie, this guy comes nowhere near my kids. He doesn't come after me. He hurts no one, noble, common, orphan, pets, livestock… I hold you personally responsible.” The creature growled at his empress.
“Personally responsible. If he’s with you, you’ve stepped in it too. End of discussion. If he’d hurt one of mine… We’d be having a far different tea party right now.”
He turned to the giantess, Shai, who looked to be filled with any number of volatile emotions and was having trouble picking a starting point for her murder spree.
“Babe, let it go, he didn’t hurt me this time either… He’s probably feeling pretty down about it too.” The witch gave a dark chuckle of sinister glee. “Having a crisis of confidence, buddy?” He taunted the shamed, kneeling assassin.
“Slay me, unclean witch. I will end you somehow, for what you have done; I so swear, on my soul.” He muttered, pushed beyond all endurance by this fool.
“What I’ve done?” He marveled, looking around the group. “Anybody? Any clues what he’s pissed over?”
“Who offends the empress dies by my hand, or another of my fellows.” He answered coldly.
With a strangled squeak, Gabbie fled the poolside, gasping and sobbing, with Becky in pursuit…
“Dude…” Gary grumbled. “You are super fucked up… we were singing a silly song together.”
“She sings that often.” He shrugged and remained folded onto his own knees.
“All right, follow me. We gotta talk, just you and me.” He snapped at the tattooed man. “Workshop.”
“I would rather die, than languish in your dark prison, witch.” Jocomo snapped back.
“Ok, so there is someone in there. Get your ass up. Nobody’s taking your head just for trying to kill me.” He grumbled almost cheerfully. “That’s a popular local passtime, like gossip, or fishing. If you succeed, plenty of fuckers will cheer.”
He smiled that disturbing smile once more and led the assassin down into the depths, still chattering on. “…mostly demon cultists and rich slave traders want me dead, that’s your audience.”
He sighed and went to his workbench, while offhandedly pointing to a piece of barbarian furniture, a ‘soofaa’ thing for sitting on. “Park it, we’re gonna be down here a while. If you think you can try and murder me again…”
He fixed the smaller man with a withering glare, some kind of hex, probably… almost certainly.
“Don’t fucking try it. I’d have put you down already, if you weren't my brother.”
The huge barbarian said it with such conviction and confidence that the last word rang off the stones of the ‘workshop’ like crystal bells.
“Don’t look at me like that. We’re orphans…” He shrugged and turned to his strange tools and began to whistle and tap, as he worked.
Jocomo had witnessed this phenomenon from his cell a number of times. As the witch worked his dark arts, shadow musicians stepped from the dark corners all around, selected instruments from the wall pegs and began to play along.
“This one seems special to gabbie… ‘Rubber Duckie’ nineteen seventy, Ernie from Sesame Street, Children’s Television Workshop.” He sighed. “Grandpa insisted I watch only the pre Elmo episodes. Wise old man.”
“My empress, Light illuminate her blessed soul, she has always sung this song. It is hers alone. No other has ever heard it elsewhere. The Whispers searched long and well for this secret.”
“Wait…” He muttered sourly, as he spun on his stool to glare at the man seated on the cold stone floor, in front of the comfy couch. “You say your super cute, every body loves her, empress, who actually seems to be a decent person sings this song… and nobody else picked it up? It didn’t go to the top of Dickhead Klarkivich’s Imperial Top Forty Countdown?”
“I don’t know what any of that is… but none would presume to emulate her Radiances’ song… the shame would be worse than death!” He scoffed. “As well to say I should meet her gaze, or walk beside her… madness, barbarian madness!”
“So… Gabbie, when she looks up… nobody meets her eyes? When she walks, she walks alone and when she sings, no one shares her song…?” He asked softly. “She must feel so terribly poor.”
“The empire is staggering in its breadth, scope and wealth… you are a barbarian fool.” He muttered.
“I’m sure that’s all true, especially the last part. ‘Barbarian Fool’ is my middle name. Gary, Barbarian Fool, Damn You Peasant, Ward.” He turned back to his work, as his band of abominations and witchery played on around them.
“Probably best I came here after all, that would never fit on a driver’s license.”
Jocomo waited for more… but that cryptic nonsense went no further. The fool just kept whistling and singing to his work and his shades.
De do do do de da da da,
Is all I want to say to you?
De do do do de da da da,
They're meaningless and all that's true!
Eventually Jocomo spoke up. “Why am I down here with you?
“Because I don’t trust you with my family, including Gabbie. She’s weird, but she’s family. You have some issues to work through, so until I can get you on my spider’s couch for a head shrinking you and I are buddies…” He giggled through his nose in childish glee.
“Not like you and Rolf… I heard about that. We won’t be touching wieners.”
“We will if my empress orders it.” Jocomo answered coldly. “I will pillow you from behind while you scream, if she asks.”
“Gods fucking damn it! Dude! Not cool!” He snarled, turning feral and rounding on the smaller man, seeming to loom even larger in the gathering dark… where things began moving, barely seen, crawling, tentacled things.
“Consent is no joke. I don’t care how things happen where you barbarians come from, but we get ‘pillowed’ enough that it’s not amusing.”
Jocomo opened his mouth, preparing to defend his homeland, then fell silent at the big man’s glare. “You are correct. Please take my head for this affront.”
“Fucking hell…” He grumbled, as he went back to work. “As soon as the amniotic armada clears out of the private bath, you are getting a soaking and a nap… Something’s wrong in there.”
The surly giant witch went back to his work, slowly building something of metal and wood on his bench.
“I had most of the parts on hand, left over from a custom job. I’d been meaning to upgrade anyway…” The man seemed to be speaking to the room at large rather than Jocomo, chatting with something unseen.
“I got pretty angry there, but we’re working through it, together.” He nodded to himself, as he carved a small slab of bone into a strange flattened, grooved curve.
“Wallowbear rib bone bridge, very good tone. Molerat tooth frets, haunted golden magnolia neck and laminate ironwood body… bronze fittings and honest to gods possessed shark skin for the head. I’m still working on the magic snail shell resonator…” He mumbled happily. “This is going to be the hardest rocking banjo ever.”
He swiftly cleared his bench of tools and parts, leaving only the unfinished ‘banjo’ instrument on the worktable, shining in the lights. “Come on, the prenatal navy just shipped out. We’re going in, you and me.”
The mad witch led him back up the stairs and into the private bath he had seen, but never immersed himself in. steam and chattering, happy, round bellied women poured from the entrance, while the madman stood to the side, smiling and waving. Few of the women noticed his presence, beyond avoiding bumping into him, while others actively shrank back, without really seeing the fool with the bland smile.
Shrouds of subtle glamor wavered around him, making eye contact difficult and seeing him in detail almost impossible. His Contract with Light made it clear, piercing these veils of shadow and distraction with ease. The fool seemed to not even realize he was doing it, making himself obscure and forgettable.
As the happy, chattering parade of shiny, pregnant women streamed past, herded by the golden healer girl, the small dark one and her imperial majesty herself, Jocomo made his own peace with the local shadows and vanished from mortal perception.
The witch was staring right at him, however, keen eyed and observant… as was some fluttering, darkling presence on the utter peripheries of his senses… something small… and it was gone.
The two obfuscated men slipped through the doorway into the bathing room and began to undress. His host seemed to simply shimmer in place and become nude… barbarians.
Together they sank into the huge pool, separated by only a yard of dark, bubbling green water.
“I’m not your enemy. I have no plans on your empire and your empress is my sister. Why the fuck are you so dead set on killing me bro?” He asked gently, somehow persuasively.
“It was ordered… I believed at the time, by my empress, light bless her. I know this to be a deception. Please take my head for this transgress…” A huge gout of steamy water blasted him off his stone bench under the water and carried him out into the deep end.
When he sputtered and coughed his way back, the madman pressed him again.
“Yeah, that was the first time… what about the second time… this morning?” He demanded.
“You offended her glorious majesty, her radiance felt you had shamed her and were mocking her. For this you should die. That I failed is yet another shameful blot on my soul… please take my head for…” He was swept up onto the pavers this time, deposited wet and disoriented beside the pool by a short lived tsunami.
“Those were excited, happy squeals… ‘cause someone finally sang with her… Ya dildo! Check your aggression bro, it’s unhealthy.” He complained.
“She broke my banjo, cause she’s thoughtless and a brat… you, my friend, need help.”
“I do… it will take a few of my brothers and sisters working in concert to slay you… we will succeed.” He sighed happily, contemplating this mad witch’s ending. “Something violent and fire… fire always works.”
With shocking suddenness, a curving scythe blade of flame sprang from the madman’s hand, erupting from a brass hilt in his grip. “I do fire too, buddy. Keep thinking.”
He vanished the scorching inferno blade and the steam began to spread back through the room. “Maybe try smothering me with a pillow some night, that’s bound to work...”
“You are mad…” Jocomo muttered sourly.
“You’re just figuring that out? Slow on the uptake, buddy. Come on, it’s naptime for you.”
He led the way up the stairs and to the room Spider and George had been staying in. Now George was in the palace, ‘Liaising’, whatever that meant, leaving it vacant.
“Bed or futon, you choose. Swallow this pill and go to sleep. If you want, I can get your empress to come down and order you to…” The mad fool said firmly, offering a small golden orb on his open palm.
“Poison? As you wish.” He popped the stoned tablet in his mouth and curled up on the futon in the corner without further complaint.
#
“Fucking weird…” Gary muttered as he closed the door.
“He comes from a far off place… you should understand better than most, how he feels.” Tawny said softly.
“I’ll work on seeing his perspective when he can go a day without trying to kill me… good thing he sucks at it.” He grumbled.
“Gary, those injuries he dealt you, if you had actual organs and biological functions you would not have survived long enough for me to help you… not a chance.” She spoke firmly, but he just chuckled and shook his head.
“At this point, killing me will make things so much worse…” He muttered darkly, letting his chuckle build into a near maniacal giggle. “I’ve set things in motion… nothing will stop it… I can only slow it down and point in a direction…” He waved abstractedly and slowly faded from her perceptions like a ghost.
“Gary, Damn You Ward!” Tawny shouted into the common room. “Show yourself right now!”
“He’s gone…” Amy grumbled from the sofa by the fire, rubbing sleepy, naptime eyes, as Wilf and Rio popped up over the arm of the couch as well. “He went ridin’ his bike…”
When Amy finished, Tawny could just hear it in the distance, the angry *shing shing!* of his bike bell, fading in the distance.
#