"We would like to see Tombert de L'Isle" she declared.

An odd little hunch of a man stared up at her.

"You and everyone else" he snorted.

He looked at her from behind a counter that was far too big for his stature, and far too small for his thirst for bureaucratic powers. He fixed his beady eyes on them with a sharp maliciousness that could only be found in playground bullies, peeved paper-pushers, and spiteful moles.

"Yes, I assumed it would not be that simple" she sighed. "We would like rooms, then. Somewhere to spend the night. We were told that is a possibility here? We can pay."

"Lots of people can pay, but we can't accommodate lots of people" hissed the tiny king from the vast expanse of his tiny kingdom.

"Why not? It's a huge tent... building... thing" she squinted. She was not used to fumbling with words, and her frustration flashed plainly. It was no easy task, to rope together a sensible sentence in those surroundings; but, on a matter of principle, she seemed determined to steer clear of any fantastical wording. "Why would you build a tent so stupidly large, if not to accommodate lots of people?"

"I'm not the one who built it; I don't know nothing, I just man the reception" he oozed delight in his unwillingness to help.

Percy watched him in fascinated horror. He had never seen anyone display such rapture at the prospect of being a hurdle to others. He noticed the warning signs of Valeria's evaporating patience: her arms uncrossing, her hands planting on her hips, her composure fucking off entirely.

He looked about him, already dreading a repeat of the tavern fight, and wondering what it might look like in a tent. There was an awful lot of things that could catch fire, to begin with. There was also an awful lot of people who looked eager to join anything that was crowded and loud. He noticed a woman drop a pearl earring and then look around, bemused, when no one picked it up for her. Not far from her was a man drenched in tattered silks, staring at a wine stain with a vague look of confusion and recrimination for not cleaning itself up. Reclining on a purple velvet ottoman near the reception desk, Percy saw a man deep in conversation stretch out his empty wine glass and wait an eternity for it to be filled by an absent hand.

Nobles then, Percy reasoned, or at least wealthy commoners. Even dressed in tattered fabrics, they were nevertheless clad in the scintillating certainty that they mattered, because no one else did. No amount of rags would ever undress them of that stinking garment.

His father had sometimes told him of his days before coming into wealth; not proudly, nor with ease, but to at least impart some wisdom from the experience. He had warned Percy to never commit the mistake of being a pauper in the presence of a rich man. They were full of contradictions, he had once told his son, unwittingly proving his point by holding up a jewelled goblet and spilling expensive wine on his brocade sleeve, all the while speaking as though he was himself far removed from this tribe of rich men he condemned.

But his words had stuck with Percy. They were full of contradictions, yes, but none more striking than this: they spent with abandon, eager to show they did not care or even think of gold, yet they sorely despised those who did not have any.

The tussle between Valeria and the clerk was reaching a no-man's land, unclaimed by exhausted forces. Each threw grudgingly admiring glances at the other, having found their match in perseverance. The hunched man even seemed to enjoy the novelty of being intimidated by brawn rather than abundance of coin.

Percy looked around him. 'We can pay', had said Valeria, but no one there would be impressed by coin. Other things would shine far brighter than gold.

"Don't worry – I promise I've thought this one through" he murmured in Evans' ear.

Evans raised a quizzical eyebrow, but did not move to stop him. Percy stepped up to the counter, snuffing out the duel waged there. Valeria's eyes fired two warning shots in his direction.

"Yes?" the man hissed at Percy.

He had the voice of an adder with a bad cold. Percy cleared his throat.

"Fair evening to you, sir. I am Percival. Who do I have the honour of speaking to?"

"Bradley" the adder rasped.

"Bradley, I would be greatly indebted to you if you could find us a room. I would be the last to underestimate the power held by men in your position. You see, I am travelling as part of the chosen one's retinue, and it would be unseemly for him to sleep outside."

Percy chewed out the words as best he could to ensure he would not choke on them. A few of Bradley's scales ruffled and shone visibly at the mention of the power his tribe held. But as soon as Percy spoke of the chosen one, the man's eyes darted to Evans, and recognition flared in his eyes. His whole demeanour shifted at once, transmuted from lofty marble to malleable clay. Percy had never seen anyone melt into obsequiousness so very fast at the drop of a name.

A thought came to him now. Was Evans' face well known? Was he recognized where he went from the handsome mark of his features alone? Were there portraits of him, prints, busts? Percy had never seen any, but he was slowly, painfully coming to terms with the mounting evidence that his upbringing had afforded him little worldliness. He made a note of a vital task for later: to inspect the heads etched onto each coin in his purse, so that he might quell this sudden anxiety that he had, all this time, unwittingly carried Evans in his pocket.

He was a fine connoisseur of awe-struck faces and fumbling hands, and he would usually have revelled in the sight of Bradley as he was now. But instead, he left Valeria to enjoy it all to herself, and to deal with the business of getting them rooms at last.

His attention swayed back to the mad interior of the tent, smudged by incense and colour-tinted light. One could easily sink into such an abundance of depravity, he warned himself. Yet his eyes avidly drank in those pleasures he had only ever been taught to forbid himself and others: wine cups, strangely shaped pipes, wandering hands. He had sampled them all at least once, of course, in order to better learn how to avoid them in future. Smoking, he had intensely disliked; wine, he tolerated; hands, he had kept to himself at first, and had moderately enjoyed the few times he had trusted those of others.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

They always came to him slowly, his freedoms – certainly slower than his obligations. Perhaps because those words only ever came to him in fearful tiptoes: he was not the chosen one after all. He could be seen to indulge. He may do as he wished. He need only learn how to wish differently. Enjoying himself was an art he was far from mastering, but he had seen a few others who were quite proficient in it, and it gave him hope that, with enough practice, he too might learn.

Knee-deep as he was in these musings, he only noticed the trio enthusiastically waving in his direction when they stepped right up to him. He did not recognize them straight away, but once he did, it was fresh water poured on a feverish brow. He had never imagined he would be so glad to encounter tavern musicians he had spoken to once only, somewhere between a brawl and its aftermath.

"It's – you!" he said, rather underwhelmingly.

The blond lutist of the trio immediately pulled him into a hug. He smelled of old velvet and varnished wood. Percy waited out the embrace, dumbstruck, his nose pressed awkwardly to the young man's collarbone. This, too, he had not yet learned to enjoy. Displays of affection from relatives were something he was subjected to; displays of affection from strangers were something he did not even contemplate. For the second time that day, he was treacherously backstabbed by the impossible.

"My man, my man!" the lutist sparked. He released Percy from the torment of wondering how to react. "You can't imagine how glad we are to meet you again. The fight you set off back in that tavern launched our careers!"

"Well, I didn't set off anything really... "

"Don't be so modest!" the drummer joined in. "Look at us – I can't believe we're really here, and to perform, too!"

"You here to enjoy yourself, then?" the lutist asked, placing a hand on his shoulder.

Percy bristled at the notion that he looked like someone who went places simply to 'enjoy himself'. It would be a long learning curve.

"Not quite" he sniffed.

"Oh? On business, then? No one comes here on business. We don't, and we even get paid to be here" the musician grinned.

For a reason Percy did not understand, he no longer felt capable of saying he was with 'the chosen one's retinue'. This time, he would choke. But he could not think of what else to say, and so, to his utmost dishonour, he just shrugged.

"Fair enough, fair enough. We all have some secrets we like to spread, and some we prefer to keep to ourselves" the lutist smiled, his long fair hair gilding his grin.

The musician's hand on his shoulder warmed a little.

"Oh, before I forget, we're throwing a little party later" he said. "You should come! We would be very glad to have you."

Percy frowned. In his experience, parties were not something that was 'thrown' like a common toy; they were held, like a precious thing.

"Alright" he mumbled despite himself.

"Grand!" the drummer smiled before turning to the lutist. "Leo, should we play him our new tune before the party? Test-run it a bit? It's thanks to him that we got the inspiration to write it, after all."

"Sweet waters, that's right!" Leo beamed, giving Percy's shoulder a little squeeze. "You're pretty much our muse, you know."

Shit, Percy thought.

"Well – I would love to hear it, really, but I know it's often tricky for musicians to play out of the blue, there's so much that needs to be just right – the acoustics, the... tuning..."

He threw a panicked glance at his friends, dreading the thought that he was about to be serenaded by a trio, and there was nothing he could do to stop it. But they hadn't noticed his absence: the clerk Bradley was busy fawning over Evans and shaking his hand with the extreme weight of reverence; Evans was busy looking as solemn and dignified as he could; Valeria was busy ensuring that Bradley did not become too much of a bother; and Myrtle was busy ensuring that, in case he did, Valeria would not hit Bradley too hard.

Leo was already strumming his lute. But what he played best was his smile.

"If the mood's right, the rest will follow" he grinned, and pinched out the first chord.

In Percy's experience, there were at least three things in the world that were impossible to dislodge: unwelcome guests, doors with swollen frames, and earworms. He could feel the tune burrowing into his head and finding its forever home. The drummer and the flutist played with a drunken abandon, which was all the more terrifying to Percy given they were sober. The trio hammered out a syncopated rhythm that shaped and dented time with a gloriously uneven groove.

"Is it catchy?" Leo asked when they finished, after joining their instruments in a crashing cadence.

"Like the plague" Percy replied grimly.

The trio shared an overjoyed look.

"Looks like we're all set for tonight then! You'll come, won't you?"

They gave him directions on how to reach their quarters that evening, and Percy listened as little as he could – he wanted a fair chance to claim, with complete honesty, that he had gotten lost on his way to the party, and had thus tragically been unable to attend.

The musicians shook his hand with an eagerness that slightly confused him. And Leo's fingers lingered a touch on his wrist, which entirely bewildered him.

"And remember" the flutist proclaimed as they stepped away, waving his hand high in the air, "we're The Rabble-rousers, and we do weddings, fights and funerals!"

Percy stared at them as they slipped into the crowd and disappeared from sight.

"Who were they?" jumped a voice in his ear.

He felt his heart catapult into his throat.

"Bloody hell Myrtle, weren't you going to kill me by strangling me with the scarf? I thought giving me a heart attack would be less fun for you."

"Sorry! Force of habit. Servants should not be seen or heard and all that. I keep forgetting I can make sound when I walk now. So who were they?"

"The Rabble-rousers, and they do weddings, fights and funerals" Percy mumbled. "Do we know where to go next?" he asked Evans and Valeria as they approached.

"Yes" Valeria replied, with a slight pinch in her voice. "He told us to follow the trail of dancing people."

"The – what?"

He swept the tent-room with his eyes again. He saw people drinking, laughing, some singing, others gambling, all frenetically amusing themselves, but none dancing. Except... he stared harder at a blond woman he noticed only now, swaying her arms in an odd quavering cadence. She stood right by one of three hallways that branched off of the foyer, stretching their coloured fabrics into the depths of the tent.

"Is that – dancing, do you think?" Percy asked, pointing her out.

"If you're feeling generous" came Valeria's verdict.

They made their way towards the woman, walking past a dizziness of satin, silks and scarlet. The hallway beyond her unfurled to their sight, and they stopped in their tracks. A long queue of loose-haired, loose-limbed dancers lined the hallway and disappeared into another room. The closest they got to the room, the more turbulent and fierce their thrusts and slips became, each with a shared madness of their own.

"I told you Bradley was being truthful with us, Valeria" Evans breathed out.

"It reminds me of when we used to get absolutely pissed on scrumpy, back at my old workplace" Myrtle said. "One of us would go and tell the masters we had the dancing sickness, and we'd have a hell of a time dancing the night away. We'd get someone's cousin or a servant from another house to come and play the doctor, and look at us all jumping on tables and say, ah yes, 'tis the dancing sickness, you just have to wait it out. Usually the masters just accepted it, and they'd stay away too, since they were afraid of catching it. Killed two birds with one stone, as the saying goes, not that I like the saying. Of course, it was a tricky balance, you couldn't do it too much. The clever ones would catch on eventually, and the stupid ones would just hire new servants that didn't get the sickness as often. Good times, those. In-between the shit times."

Three pairs of eyes stared at her.

"What? You never ask about my life, so you never get to know all the interesting stuff I have to tell."

"Our servants used to say they had the dancing sickness sometimes" Percy said slowly, his eyes glazing over.

"I wouldn't take it personally, love, I'm sure you weren't that important to them."

Percy had been taught that, in the course of his heroic life, he would inevitably sustain life-threatening injuries in duels or battlefields, and that he would have to soldier on. So he put on a brave face, and persevered through Myrtle's blow.