Sebastian Swordfish

We are inside a small hall that looks a bit royal, but not royal enough to give the notion that a great ruler is residing here. A few banners of the Order of the Eye are waving calmly back and forth, but the blue color has long faded from them. A brown-haired woman wearing a much more colorful and beautiful blue dress is sitting on a small throne. The dress is however missing the insignia of the Order and represents the volcanic flame of Ashgarden instead, colored in a fitting blue. Four dizzy-looking guards are placed at the entrance and to the outer left and right of the throne.

It seems like there should be a second throne to the left of her, instead this second throne was just moved to the side, and a tall, thin man sits on it behind a wooden table, with a bunch of papers and a pen in his hands, writing down the things that were and will be said. He starts to talk:

"Your grace, I am done with the last protocols, so I am taking the freedom to introduce your next visitor, since the list of them is still long. It is... well, a fishmonger called Sebastian Swordfish. May you forgive my remark, but he really does not look like a fishm..."

"Lady Arcenna! It is a grreat pleasure to meet you and your... scholar friend. Ahhh, how good it is to know that even the poorest fishermen are heard in these... magnificent halls."

A young man, definitely not looking like a poor fishmonger, enters the ducal stronghold in quick steps. We can see Lady Arcenna, who is actually Duchess Arcenna II of Ashgarden, roll with her eyes, but the man seems to be far from ready with his speech:

"Mylady, it is by no means my intent to waste your precious time, but a plague has befallen the sea where I'm fishing, and as you can see I w... wh.. whooa there, slowly with those pointy halberds, w..we don't want to hurt someone."

The guards had enough of the loud, odd-looking man that just pulled a wet fish out of one of his big pockets. A few scribbled scraps of paper are falling to the ground while he moves a few steps back to keep the distance to the duchess that the guards demand from him.

"Let him pass...", Duchess Arcenna ordered slightly annoyed, but also a bit amused. She had promised a few days ago that everyone could bring up their troubles freely in the audience hours, without letting her guard filter out the ones that are not deserving to be heard, like they would certainly do with fishmongers that are just lousy bards in truth.

"My deepest thanks, mylady. This fish, as you might already smell, must have had an illness greater than the plague that once befell the ancient horses of Ankhra - rest in peace you poor things. But this is by far not the only fish suffering from permanent smelliness, your highness, if you would follow me outside to the shore near the tavern..."

"With all due respect, sir Swordfish, the countess has other duties.", the scribe interrupted him seriously, "Many more of your kind are waiting outside, so if you wouldn't mind putting that... fish back where it came from and leave, we are gladly going to hold council over your... harvesting problem."

"Oh, have great thanks, High Commander of the Pen that bewrites those holy papers, a pity that no one will ever read them, at least if they don't have to. But maybe a poem of a fisherman without a Libra too much will help them survive the boring reading..."

He seems to know that it is high time for him to leave, so he uses his momentum while the scribe is still thinking about his last words, and starts walking away while singing:

My lady in blue
so glad to see you
I'm wishing to drink
The fishes they stink
Please come to the sea
We want to be freee..eeee

One of the outer guards lost his countenance and greeted the self-proclaimed fisherman goodbye with a kick into his back.
Arcenna makes great effort to hide her cheerful mood from her scribe and the guards, even while asking the former:

"Have you written down everything he said? Good, then let's move on quickly."

She now shares the wish of her scribe to get the other audiences over, soon.

---

A few hours later, Arcenna is about to enter the tavern door, when she hears the bard from inside:

"What right do you have to talk about her like that? Tarren said it a few minutes ago, she just reduced the Peacebloom patrol by half, even if the guard was already totally overwhelmed with the Peacebloom situation. Do you think she would have done that if she just cared about the intimate zones of Patriarch Nemphis, to say it in your words?"

Arcenna is no regular visitor of the Broken Bottle Tavern, but with the commoner's cloth she chose to replace her blue dress with, she fits quite well into the atmosphere. She opens the door to see her fisherman bard and, ironically enough, a real fisherman, both standing on a table in the middle, surrounded by other mostly drunk guests and the innkeeper. They are all too distracted from the spectacle to even notice her.

"Yesss, the P-Peacebloom P-P-Patrol, now she moves the guards away. But t-then, when she goes back to them, to her S-Silverwing mommy and daddy, she brings a few nicely trained cocksuckers of the White Inquisischnnn, and a sorcerer that will make all bloom in-nn-in-iii..."

"Infertile, I thought you Ashgardeners would know how to drink. Well, I guess you do, but your intellect is not thriving from it one might assume."

"Sh..She is not better than L...Lardas. Listen to me, C... Corkscrew, I really l.l..like you but h...hear me out! They all say they want our best, but all they ever wanted and always will want ... is our Libra, every last coin of it! They d...dream of us as s..slaves..."

"Arcenna is dreaming of other things, I'm sure about that."

A small gaze informs Arcenna that Corkscrew, as really everyone she knows calls the bard, has noticed her. She is pleasantly surprised by the fact that Corkscrew has lowered his normal amount of Ragnar's Rum because he knew that she would come.

Arcenna, Arcenna, you beautiful lass
What beautiful cheeks, the cheeks of your...

Arcenna herself is the first to grin, not necessarily for the wit but because she already knows the line out of one of Corkscrew's worst songs that somehow became popular in taverns, and hearing it again makes her feel a few years younger than she is. A few seconds later, all of the drunkards begin to laugh, some bawling the word "ass" in various levels of loudness and tone, and Corkscrew gets up a flute from the table and starts to play a melody while interrupting it with some of his verses from time to time:


Tythos, the greatest, please lend me your eye
Let me look down from high up in the sky

So I might see where my love has been gone
I want to be with her cheeks all night long

Arcenna orders a beer at the surprised innkeeper, and a few others are noticing her, too. Some say a bunch of unpleasant things at her direction, but Corkscrew's song is always getting their attention back again sooner or later.

---

An hour and two beers later, Arcenna has enough and leaves the tavern to get some of the beautiful cold air of this night. The days are still warm, so the nights are made for a walk at the seaside, Arcenna thinks. What a shame that she can't afford to do this every evening. She walks alongside the coast slowly, to give the bard time to catch up. Then, she hears him from behind:

"You finally came to look after my fishes, mylady. Ohh, I'm so grateful!"
"Pulling a dead fish out in front of me, disturbing my work? That a way to greet an old friend?"
"No one told me that my request had to be serious..."
"Where did you get that fish anyway? Please don't tell me..."
"Barnie gave it to me as a welcome gift. Get one for free ... and in his case best let the others be."
"Barnie?"
"The other one dancing on the table, the one that had nothing but love for you."

It is part of that typical strangeness around the bard that he was here for maybe a day, already informing her about the name of one of her subjects.

"Is there any specific reason why you are not entertaining the people of Lumiar right now?", she asks.
"Hmmm... no, not that I could think of one."
"You got a few free days?"
"I TOOK a few free days. People won't overthrow the government because Corkscrew didn't play two or three evenings, even if I would love to be that important."
"And you just left Lumiar, greeted the guards with words like you don't care about your work anymore?"
"Of course I didn't. Until now, it should look like a wild animal has invaded my home. But if you look closer at the hints I spread, a sorcerer might come to the conclusion that I was in fact invaded by a DEMON!"

Arcenna shrugs unwillingly, but makes it look like she just shook her head.

"A sorcerer will know if those hints are made up."
"Your words against mine.", he grins.

It is like it has always been, Corkscrew seems to have the upper hand in each and every argument, but in the end, he'd be the one that would get into trouble, and in the worst case, she had to help the stupid bard.

"So, why Ashgarden?", she asks.
"Why somewhere else?", he says while beginning to commit the crime of smoking Peacebloom in front of Ashgarden's countess, "there is no place on Athor governed with such strict rules."
"Your life is in my hands, bard, remember that."
"Your reputation was in my hands a few hours ago. One wrong word from your side and your new credibility of being the duchess of the people would have been gone."

He is overestimating himself by lengths as usual, she thought, but he isn't totally wrong.

"I'm glad you didn't throw the fish into the face of Facelias."
"Facelias? Oh wait, let me guess, your scribe?"
"My scribe that wants to gain my favor so I will speak good about him in front of the Order."
"He wants to become the greatest scribe of all scribes?"
"No, a sorcerer actually. But what's your problem with scribes? You have ideas and write them down on paper, that's not that different."
"Not that different? No need to be rude, dear duchess! He does nothing more than writing down the words of others..."
"...while you are just writing down your own stupid ideas without caring if anyone benefits from it."
"If I wouldn't know how you meant this..."

They're both smiling into themselves while enjoying the view on the water, the clear sky and the growing moon. The name Camun comes into Arcenna's mind. One of the last audiences was with a few goblins that demanded to celebrate at night if Camun was at its highest spot as this seems to be their tradition for centuries. Although she had to disallow the long-lasting, loud celebrations inside of Ashgarden since it would only lead to more racial conflicts between humans and goblins, she found it inspiring how close the goblins were connected to this moon, while she only saw a white light rising up in the night, beautiful for sure, but not reason enough to jump around in extasy three days and nights.

"One day", Corkscrew begins again, "I want to live here. Maybe I don't even want to be Corkscrew anymore."
"You want to be Albrecht then?"

Albrecht is his real name, but he hated it since he was a kid.

"Why not? Give me another ten years and I might look like an Albrecht."
"Hmmm, can't be worse than looking like an idiot."

As they laugh, Arcennia realizes how much she missed Corkscrew, or at least someone to talk to like that.

"Thanks for coming.", she hears herself saying, and without a warning, the duchess of Ashgarden hugs Sebastian Swordfish. At least he doesn't smell like fish anymore.