They followed Tombert out of the room, plunging into crowded, fabric-smothered hallways. A trail of excited cries and murmurs rose as they passed. From the corner of his eyes, Percy noticed the slithering silhouette of the clerk Bradley, pointing at Evans and speaking to others around him.

Tombert's hand reached for Percy and gently pulled him towards them. They threw an arm around his shoulder and paraded along with him at their side.

"I'm really not the one who should be in front here" Percy muttered, throwing a look back at Evans, who walked with an easy gait and an easier smile, unburdened by screaming, cheering crowds.

"You know, love, I never did hear anyone quite so obviously fishing for compliments" Tombert grinned. "You're just saying that because you want to hear me say, nonsense, of course you're special. And I do believe you are, in your own way. But why don't you do us all a favour and believe it yourself, without anyone else saying so? Cut out the middle man."

"You say that like it's easy" Percy mumbled.

"No, I say it like it's possible. I did get the impression your friend here" Tombert glanced behind at Evans, "walks around with a grand purpose about him. He looks like he's used to it. Whereas you look like you know all about it, but don't have it. I know which story interests me the most."

Percy stared at Tombert, mouth gaping.

"How do you..."

"I'm a bard. I write ballads for a living. I know how to sniff out these things."

As they turned a corner, a trio of Tombert's admirers ripped open their linen blouses to bare their chests. Percy burned crimson and averted his gaze so abruptly that he nearly collided with a man selling tunics with Tombert's face embroidered on them.

They reached the end of the labyrinthine hallway, and Tombert raised a flap that led outside, letting the daylight pour into the shaded interior. They stood right at the edge of the lake, on a wooden walkway lined with candles. It led to the wide deck area and its raised stage, woven through with garlands of wisteria and lantern lights. The deck was already crowded with festival-goers drinking and playing cards. Onstage were four musicians playing odd-looking instruments that Percy had never seen before. They had rickety music stands that trembled with stage-fright every time a gust of wind swept across the lake, and a page-turner who busied himself between the four players. Most importantly, they had a look of practiced discontent about them that granted them more prestige than any music stands and page-turners ever could.

"Don't tell me you're a fan of them" droned a voice to Percy's left.

He turned to see Leo standing beside him, with thick black eyeliner on his grey eyes. His long blond hair was nearly tangled with the strings of the lute flung on his back.

"Who are they?" Percy asked.

"The Skelted Skamelans" Leo spat the words out with distaste.

"I've never even heard of them."

"They'll be glad to hear you say that. They're the most pedantic bunch in here. They want to remain as niche and underground as possible, but they also want to hear as many people as possible say they're niche and underground, so they come here to make sure they keep being popularly unpopular. I mean, really, they even have this page-turner who's on duty for the festival. How pompous is that?"

"Nothing wrong with a page-turner" Tombert slid seamlessly into the conversation with a well-oiled smile. "Sometimes you just need to read your music. I've worked with him myself for some of my more art pieces."

Tombert' attention flitted away at once, as they watched the final throes of the performance onstage. Leo gawked at Tombert, his jaw dropping. He leaned closer to Percy to murmur in his ear, and Percy caught a languid scent of sandalwood and rose.

"Is that the Tombert de L'Isle? I didn't know you were friends with them! Please, you have to get them to come to our party tonight."

"I don't think I could – "

"I would be very happy to come to your party" Tombert intervened, their face suddenly right there again. "I don't see why I shouldn't do a good deed, if the good deed is attending a party."

"How did you even hear that?" Leo babbled in gleeful amazement.

"I have really good hearing."

"If anything, you have selective hearing" Valeria objected behind them. "You ignored about three dozen admirers on the way here who were screaming for an autograph."

"Yes, that's what I mean. My hearing is really good for me. Does wonders for my disposition."

Tombert strutted towards the stage, a full parade all by themselves. The audience's attention was already seeping away from the musicians begrudgingly bowing onstage. As soon as the crowd spotted Tombert, it rose in a thundering wave of stomping feet and avid cries. The sound of it rushed in an almost threatening eagerness, and Percy thought Tombert very brave for facing it. He was not as brave himself. As he followed the bard and walked through that parting, frothing wave, Percy looked down at the rugged wooden planks of the deck, wishing himself a thin thing slipping through its cracks and into the lakewaters below.

He nearly bumped into Tombert when they reached the stage. Waiting to speak to them was the page-turner, all of him a fidgeting, fretting scrap of fabric in the wind. He was a handsome young man with sculpted cheekbones, dark ear-length hair, and a look of evergreen anxiety that kept him in a perpetually wide-eyed state.

"I was meaning to ask, Tombert" came his voice, a distant but graceful reed, "will you be needing me for your late-night concert tomorrow?"

"How many times have I told you to call me Tommy? Not enough, clearly" Tombert grinned, flinging their arm around the man's shoulders, and their other arm around Percy's. "Have you met my friend Percival here?"

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Percy's eyes met the page-turner's, and they were locked into a stare that was uncomfortable even before it began.

"Oh, there's a party tonight that I was invited to" Tombert announced to the page-turner. "You should come along, you might have some fun."

Percy, still fastened tight under Tombert's arm, thought of Mr Bobone, his etiquette instructor, who would have razed empires to the ground rather than see party invitations being issued without the proper formalities. It was, Percy supposed, an understandable reaction from Mr Bobone's perspective: those who made it the business of their life to complicate the lives of others would always feel threatened by any proof that life could, in fact, be simple. The page-turner shrugged with a crumpled smile, and Tombert at once released them and clapped their hands together.

"Excellent! Now, let's get this over and done with. You can stand near me on the stage, if you'd like to see everything from up there. I can say you're part of the act."

"You wouldn't dare" Valeria squinted.

"If you keep talking to me with that voice, I sure won't" they shivered. "Gods, what are you? A general?"

"Something like that" Evans grinned at her. "Thank you, but we can stay here."

"Suit yourselves" Tombert shrugged before reaching inside their dark blue doublet, which Percy didn't even remember seeing them put on. They slipped out a few white cotton balls. "Don't forget to put these on."

Tombert smirked at Percy before tossing the cotton his way, gracing him with a "I'm sure you won't need those" before jumping onto the stage. Percy grimaced at the cotton balls on his palm, thinking of how ridiculous he would look with them, and of how many witnesses there would be to his ridiculousness. When he finally started worming the cotton into his ears, Evans already had his properly stuffed. He hadn't even hesitated, and he already had several festival-goers pointing at him past Percy's smaller frame. Percy looked down again at the wooden planks. This too he could despise about himself: he would always be vain, even when there was no one looking. At him.

On the stage, Tombert sat on a simple wooden stool, resting one foot on another, smaller stool, resting their lyre on their knee, resting, in fact, all of themselves, on those boards. It was a strange sight for Percy: to see a place that usually so transformed those who stepped onto it, who sparked in them a nervous light, flickering like at the merest chill from the audience – to see, for the first time, someone in glorious indifference step onto a stage and not know it. It was only then that Percy truly noticed how striking Tombert looked. They did not simply look magnificent: they had a talent for turning the world around them into a mere frame of their living portrait. They carried themselves with the confidence of one who had nothing to prove, but who could prove a great deal if needed. Lavish mirrors, grand staircases, ornate columns: Percy knew at once that if Tombert stood between them, they would be nothing but gilded frames.

The musician tapped their foot on the boards. It was just a light sound; just flint and stone striking tinder.

"Are you ready to be underwhelmed?" they cried with an incandescent smile.

The audience flashed in an uproar.

"Are you ready to be bored out of your minds?"

The clamour grew. Percy could feel the restless heat of the crowd around him. He held his fingertip by his ear, ready to push the cotton ball deeper.

"Well strap in, because we're in for a middling performance!" Tombert bellowed over the din of the crowd, brandishing their lyre in the air before claiming from it a strident chord.

From the fizzling and crackling audience rose the smoke of wild abandon. Percy huddled closer to the other three as they watched on in disbelief. The crowd arranged itself into neat rows: no arm or leg or foot sprung out or twirled or waved without being perfectly mirrored by all the other springing and twirling and waving arms and legs and feet.

Percy turned back to look at Tombert. He had a skill he had so far concealed from his companions: he could, with a moderate degree of competence, read lips. He had once, briefly, had a tutor – just before Mr Bobone – who was keen on tales of spies and rogues, cloaks and daggers. When his father discovered that Percy was learning about lipreading and invisible ink and lock-picking, the tutor was dismissed at once, and Percy was from then on exposed to vigorous doses of anything that might scrub the shadows off of him: protocol, diplomacy, the rules of duels of honour and the honour of duelling by the rules. He never dared to confess to his father that he had not, in fact, forgotten the other skills entirely.

He stared at Tombert, trying to discern the words shaped by their lips. He was not skilled enough for it to be easy, and it was like squinting at clumsy handwriting, the meaning of the words squirming just beyond his reach. But at times, he could make sense of them.

"... just a jump to the left..."

The deck shook. Every inch of it quaked under the weight of a crowd moving as one.

"... and a twirl to the right..."

Percy felt the whoosh of countless skirts and tunics and capes frothing like a wave, as every single person on the deck twirled as instructed.

"... your hands on your hips, and a hop, hop, hop..."

The crowd obeyed Tombert's words. Percy gawked at the odd display. It reminded him of a heard of overly excited goats with a limp and an attitude.

"... and reach for the stars!"

Rows and rows of hands stretched up with desperate eagerness to grasp at the starless sky. By his side, Evans stood still as he watched the crowd, tense, taut, drawn like a bowstring. Only Evans, Percy thought, could watch with his whole body.

"... and another jump to the right..."

Percy was so busy shifting his attention between Tombert and their captive audience that he wasn't ready for the shuddering impact of the jump on the deck. His knees buckled with the sudden shift of the planks beneath him, and he stumbled with a painful thud straight onto Evans' chest. Tangled up in embarrassment, he scrambled at once to move away, and found that he couldn't. Evans' arms held onto him to steady him. Nothing could have unsteadied him more. For a second, tucked somewhere in the folds of a travel-worn tunic, there was nothing but the scent of Evans' warmth.

Evans looked down at him, a predictable question etched on his features.

"I'm alright" Percy mumbled, which was not quite true. But Evans, of course, couldn't hear him, and held him still.

"... to the left, to the left, to the left..."

The wooden boards under their feet shook, then lightened. Percy looked to his left. Those who had the misfortune of being too close to the edge of the deck shuffled left, and left, and left, and plunged into the lake.

The hold on Percy's arms released at once. He watched as Evans ran to the edge of the deck and jumped into the water after those who had fallen, not a moment of hesitation blocking his path.

Valeria took off in a sprint, all gale and thunder, and jumped in after him. Myrtle followed suit and knelt precariously over the edge as she tried to drag up those who had stumbled into the lake. Evans was shepherding them back to the deck, his arms drawing wide arcs over the water's surface as he swam back and forth.

Only then did Percy realize he was not yet there with them, but remained, instead, here, right next to the stage. He was a good enough swimmer to save his pride, yet he was not certain he was good enough to save others. But he knew what his strengths were. His head snapped to the stage and he shouted at Tombert, popping out one of his cotton earbuds.

"Play something to make them swim back onto the deck!"

"Percival darling, there's an abundance of songs on romantic love, but a surprising lack of repertoire on useful things like swimming" Tombert said, scratching their head.

"Then a work song, or, or something that goes 'heave, ho', to help pull them up!"

Tombert nodded and switched songs with a disconcerting ease. Percy rushed to the edge of the deck. He knelt next to Myrtle and helped pull up the muck-coated festival-goers as Evans and Valeria dragged them back from the thick waters.

Behind him, the tightly woven energy of the dancing crowd unravelled. His mind registered vaguely, as he huffed through the effort of pulling up spluttering and coughing bodies, that Tombert had stopped playing. A voice sounded behind him.

"So, I'm sure we can all agree now that there's something terribly wrong with me" Tombert stated, lyre in hand.