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Critical Role (Mighty Nein) fic: But I'll Go Down with My Friends - Chapters 1 & 2
Can't let Ao3 being down deter me from posting my fic chapter when I said I would, so...
Chapter 1
If Caleb had been thinking more clearly, he would have realized that Nott's reaction was inevitable, and probably even that the rest of it would follow from there.
Of course, if Caleb had been thinking perfectly clearly, he would not have been wet and naked on the floor of the hidden cellar under the Leaky Tap with silver thread coiled firmly around his wrists and ankles, and the issue would not have arisen.
He was aware of a pang of regret as he maneuvered the bit of copper wire he'd carefully left in his own reach before using the silver thread on himself. This was not the way he'd wanted to announce to Nott that he'd learned her favorite little spell.
"Nott, it is me, Caleb. I am in the place where we spent the night when the others were annoyed with me, and I need to stay here alone for a while. Please lock the door from the outside so no one else will come in. I will let you know when I need to come out. You can reply to this message."
Nott would do what he needed. She had never let him down. Caleb focused on that, and on keeping very still. The floor was dirt, gritty and cold against his bare skin, but the wall was rough stone. He braced both hands against it, and had an unpleasantly vivid flash—not anticipation but memory—of what such a wall, and his hands, would look like when he had forgotten himself enough to claw at it until he couldn't anymore.
He closed his eyes, pushing away that unhelpful fragment of memory. He was not truly confined here; he was making a choice for the good of the group. Nott would—
"Caleb? Caleb, what are you doing down here? You don't even have a light!"
Scheisse. "It's all right, Nott, I don't want one. I just need to—no!"
He flattened himself harder to the wall as he felt Nott approach, close enough that in this state he could smell her, and her closeness stirred the air against his skin. His mind filled with the impulse to reach for her, to uncover the skin she kept shrouded in clothes and wrapped in bandages, to—
No. He would do no such thing. He kept still. Nott was his friend, his little sister, his student, and he would never mistreat her, no matter what thoughts went through his head.
She was still coming closer, heedless of the danger she did not understand. "Caleb, you're naked. And clean. Sort of—you're getting all dirty again lying on the ground like that."
"I—I got something on me," Caleb said, trying not to breathe through his mouth, trying not to scream no matter how the desperation clawed inside his chest. No one ever listened to the words you said once you started screaming, and if his words weren't enough nothing would be. "I had to wash it off but it affected me a little—don't come any closer, Nott, if you get too close I'll hurt you, and I could not bear that."
"You got something..." Nott trailed off, and Caleb's fingers curled in against the wall as he struggled to keep himself perfectly still. He was aware of the tensing of his muscles, aware of how the whole of his body was bare to her without even the shield of bathwater or his usual accumulation of grime. He curled in a little more, but it only made him more aware of leaving his vulnerable backside available.
He panted a little, his mind filling up with useless frantic circling. He startled back to awareness when Nott spoke again. "I think I understand. I won't let you do anything bad, Caleb. I'll take care of you."
"You can't—"
"I'll go, for now," Nott said, before he could beg her to. "Here, I'll take your books and put them somewhere safe. What did you do with your clothes?"
"Burned," Caleb croaked, biting his tongue on the urge to make her promise not to look into the books. If she wanted to she could have a hundred times over by now.
"Oh," Nott said. "Right. You just... try to relax, Caleb. It's going to be okay. I won't let anything bad happen."
Caleb didn't believe that, but it was kind of her to say it, and when he heard the lock snap into place he knew he was alone, so at least he could stop holding on quite so hard.
It was still early in the day when Nott returned to the common room of the Leaky Tap after stashing Caleb's books safely away. It had been barely light out when Caleb told her he was going to look for some supplies he needed, and it apparently hadn't taken him long, on his own in the city, to get into quite a lot of trouble.
On the bright side, that meant the others were all still sitting around a table, munching their breakfasts or stealthily pocketing food for later, so Nott didn't have to search for help. She didn't know how they were going to help, but she was at least seventy percent certain that they would. Normally she wouldn't care what they did, would figure she and Caleb together could handle anything, but given the nature of the problem, she knew they couldn't handle this.
This time, she and Caleb really did need the others.
"Nott!" Jester welcomed her brightly, patting the bench beside her. "Where's Caleb? Here, have some breakfast."
Nott sat and ate a little from the plate Jester pushed to her, looking around at the others. None of them but Jester were paying attention to her; none of them were worried about Caleb. But they weren't worried about anything else, either. They'd kept their bargain with the Gentleman, so they would be safe, and everyone seemed to have left behind the fight about Caleb almost stealing those scrolls.
She hoped they had. She hoped they weren't about to have another fight like that one, but she had a feeling that however Caleb had gotten himself into this predicament, it hadn't involved much thinking about what was safest and best for the group.
Still, there was no use putting it off. Nott cleared her throat and stood up on the bench, so that she was looking the others directly in the eyes. It caught all their attention, and she wanted to back away from the weight of all those eyes on her—but Caleb needed this.
"Caleb is having a... problem," Nott said. "He needs some help, but it's something that should be discussed discreetly."
"Oooh, is it a butt problem?" Jester asked, leaning in with obvious interest. Fjord and Molly looked worried and thoughtful; Beau and Yasha looked wary.
"It's not... not a butt problem," Nott said to Jester, remembering all too clearly the sight of Caleb from behind, entirely naked, ropy muscles tensing as he tried to pull away from her when he was already up against the wall. The smell of his arousal, and that faint floral note she'd only smelled once before, bringing back a flood of memories of Yeza, equal parts excited and terrified over the rare ingredient he'd acquired.
It was the pollen of a particular plant, he'd told her, exceptionally rare and illegal in most places, terribly potent. He had had it sealed in glass, but had unstopped the jar, and she had caught the faintest whiff of the smell before she got her wits about her. She had scolded Yeza for being reckless and convinced him to burn it, to keep them safe.
Safe. She should have—
She should not be thinking of him. Not now.
"Not not a butt problem?! That means it kind of is a butt problem," Jester said excitedly. "Is it—"
"This is the opposite of discreet, Jester," Molly cut in, when Nott would have tried to answer her again. "Come on, upstairs if we're going to talk about this. Is he in your room, Nott?"
"He's safe," Nott deflected. "For now. Let's go upstairs," she added hastily, when Beau and Jester both seemed about to ask more questions.
"Yeah, come on, we're not doing this here," Fjord said firmly, making herding gestures to the others, and Nott hung back a little to be sure the rest were going up the stairs before she hurried along. They wound up in Molly and Fjord's room, and Fjord came in last, shutting the door and then leaning against it.
Nott was uncomfortably reminded of the moment Molly and Fjord had trapped her here, luring her with the illusion of a jeweled flask, but Jester was bouncing cheerfully on Molly's bed, and Molly sprawled beside her and said, "So, Nott, what's our wizard gone and done now?"
The others all focused on her; even Jester stopped bouncing.
"He's been... exposed," Nott said, wondering how much knowledge she dared betray. "To a... substance. A powerful substance that is affecting him. Powerfully."
"Ohh, like in a sex way?" Jester said. "Like he has to have lots and lots and lots of sex or else his brain will explode or his liver will burn up inside him or something?"
Nott wondered for half a second how Jester had gotten to that conclusion so fast and then realized that Jester probably knew more about alchemical substances related to sex than most people who weren't highly specialized—or occasionally less-than-law-abiding—alchemists or courtesans. "I... think it's something like that. I don't know how severe it is. He might not die. He wants us all to leave him alone, but I can tell he's already suffering badly. He was worried he might hurt me, so he didn't want me near him, and I don't think it's good to agitate him in this condition."
"That is definitely sex pollen," Jester said, and Molly said sharply, "Moonweaver lily pollen."
Everyone's attention shifted to Molly, who huffed a sigh, waving a hand as if to dismiss his own vehemence. "It's sacred to the Moonweaver, which means it's illegal to cultivate in the Empire, even more than the distillations are controlled everywhere else. If Caleb managed to find someone's secret crop of Moonweaver lilies, they're either going to be upset that someone's fucked up their ritual preparations or upset that someone fucked up their extremely lucrative illegal botanicals. Either way, if there's any chance they can track Caleb from the growing site to here, he's not going to be safe for long, no matter how light a dose he got."
"And the crownsguard probably won't be best pleased with Caleb or the growers," Fjord put in. "So we're definitely going to need to hide him somewhere while he gets this out of his system. Which, uh, do we need volunteers for that?"
"We should see if we can get professionals to do it," Jester put in. "My mama didn't usually take those cases because she's like, way too specialized, but she gave advice to the people who did—they had to work in teams, because someone who's gotten hit with..." She looked over at Molly and enunciated carefully, "Moonweaver lily pollen... takes a lot of attention. Like, a lot. I bet the Pillow Trove has people for that!"
Nott considered how much the Pillow Trove was likely to charge for something like that, and whether Caleb would even be able to get into the Tri-Spire in his current state. Getting him through the sewers might be even more difficult than getting him through the gate.
"I'll go talk to them, I'm sure they can get Caleb in right away," Jester said cheerfully. "And if my mom's package has come we won't have any trouble paying for it! So I should definitely go see about that." She bounced right to her feet.
"You gonna go alone?" Fjord asked, shifting a little against the door.
"Oh," Jester said, looking around. "Does anyone want to..."
"I'll come with," Beau said quickly. "Just... keep you company or whatever. If you want."
"Sure, Beau!" Jester skipped over to the door, and Fjord stepped aside to let her out, with Beau on her heels.
Beau cast a glance back into the room, looking exceedingly dubious, and said softly, like she didn't want Jester to hear her, "If it's not, uh..."
"Yeah, we'll make some plans," Fjord said, equally quietly. "You just make sure we get Jester back in one piece. Information might be useful, if we've gotta do this ourselves."
"See if they'll sell some supplies, if nothing else," Molly put in. "Jester will know what, I have no doubt."
"Sure," Beau said. "Yeah, of course. Supplies. Seeya."
Nott had a strong suspicion that Beau had absolutely no idea what kinds of supplies might be required and also that she would punch someone, several times, rather than admit it.
When the door closed behind Beau and Jester, Molly sat up and clapped his hands together sharply, a bright grin on his face. "So! Volunteers?"
Molly ushered Fjord and Nott out of the room once they'd settled the basics, but instead of following them, he shut the door and turned to Yasha.
She sighed. She'd known, before she even spoke up to volunteer, that Molly was going to want to talk about it; he knew just enough to know that this could be complicated for her.
"It's fine," she said, before he got a word out. "What I ran from—it wasn't anything like this."
Molly blinked a few times, studying her. "Anything like what?"
She was going to explain all of it to him sometime, and maybe much sooner than she'd imagined, after this. But not right now, when they had to be focused on helping Caleb.
Yasha waved a hand. "Anything like... having to have sex with a friend who happens to be male to keep him from coming to harm. If that was all they'd asked of me, I'd never have left."
She couldn't think too hard about that, about how easily the Skyspear might have kept her, might have let her love who she loved, and still arranged for the proper babies or whatever else the tribe needed from her. If the Skyspear had been willing to do that, then home would have been a lot more like the circus, or the Nein, and everything would have been different.
Molly was nodding slowly. "Okay. I just... I know you don't talk about it, and I don't know what this might bring up. It's going to be intense, I know that much."
Yasha nodded, giving him a look as much like the one he'd given her as she could manage.
She wasn't going to ask him whether he was going to be all right with this—he had already put himself in charge of the whole thing, and he was the most knowledgeable of any of them about what was going to happen, even if she wasn't sure how much he knew or precisely how he knew it.
Molly sighed. He clearly knew exactly what she wasn't asking, just as she'd known what he was worried about for her sake.
Gustav had once taken Molly away for a day and a night and another day, to visit a hidden temple of the Moonweaver. Molly had come back with some beautiful blue-white lilies with the pollen thoroughly stripped from their red-brown stamens. He had given them to Yasha, to keep in her book. He had seemed more confident, after that, that his lost memories were nothing he could or should seek to repair, and he had been firm in his devotion to the Moonweaver ever since. But it wasn't something he talked about.
"It wasn't this," Molly said. "This is very sacred, when it's done properly. I was just a soul in need of some counsel who got a bit nosy about all the other... kinds of counseling the temple might do. The cleric told me about it—I think they thought I might be interested in a cleric's life myself? And it was a little tempting, but... Gustav was waiting. You were waiting. The whole world was waiting."
Yasha nodded. "You could always... go visit again sometime. Take Caleb, maybe, to talk about it with that cleric, if..."
Molly nodded, then visibly shook off the thought. "If, sure. But first we get him and all of us through it alive and more or less as sane as we started, and that is probably as much as we can hope for today."
"Yeah," Yasha said. "Well, I've been told that sex and other intense things are best with friends who won't mind if you cry all over them in the middle of it."
Yasha didn't know which of the two of them was more likely to spill awkward secrets or complicated feelings over the others in the process of getting Caleb through this, but she didn't think Molly was only worried about her.
He smiled at her, wide and bright, the smile that she knew, and he knew she knew, covered up all his uncertainties. "That sounds like something someone very wise must have told you. I like that."
Yasha reached out and took his hand. "Very, very wise, yes. Now let's get this show on the road."
"Caleb, sweetheart," Molly said, his voice warm and good and making Caleb smile even as he turned to face him. He thought that there was a reason he didn't want to do that, but of course he would do anything for his friend Molly, who was kneeling over him, smiling so very kindly. "Let me see your hands, there. Can you wiggle all your fingers?"
Caleb wiggled them, squirming a little as he did. He was very, very hard, and his skin felt tingly and sensitive all over, and Molly was smiling at him, which mattered more than any of the rest of it. Caleb smiled back, and wanted to roll over further, right into Molly's thighs, but didn't. Molly hadn't asked him to do that so far.
He thought Molly might, though. Molly liked that sort of thing. Caleb watched carefully, waiting for it.
"Yeah, this is why we don't do bondage with thread," Molly said, still smiling as he reached for Caleb's wrists, no trace of a reproach in his voice even though Caleb was aware that the words meant he had done something wrong. Molly wasn't angry with him; Molly was his friend, and Molly would fix whatever had gone awry. "We're just going to take this off before we have to deal with gangrene on top of everything else. I'm pretty sure you're going to need all your fingers when this is over."
Caleb keened a little, helplessly, at the incendiary touch of Molly's fingers on his skin—which hurt a little, he was vaguely aware. As soon as his hands were free he could feel just how much they hurt and knew that the only thing that would make him feel better was to touch Molly. Before he could think more than that he was tugging Molly down to him and kissing him, and Molly's tongue felt strange but so, so good against his, even better than Molly's coat under his hands with the heat of Molly's body behind it.
Caleb drew back for a breath and felt the pain in his throbbing hands, and reality crashed through whatever Molly had cast on him. He scrambled back to the wall, drawing his knees up in front of him and shoving his throbbing hands between them, though curling them away from the aching heat of his erection.
Molly hadn't asked Caleb to kiss him, hadn't even given permission. Caleb had just done it, just taken what he wanted, and that was exactly what he could not do, not and be willing to live through it.
"You're going to want to unbind your ankles, too," Molly said, unperturbed. "It's fine, Caleb, you're not going to hurt anyone."
"You don't know that," Caleb said, feeling the hunger still shuddering through him, desire still clawing at him, even when he looked at his feet which were a bit purple and bloody from the tightness of the thread binding. They didn't hurt properly, which he suspected meant that he really did need to get the thread off, but he wanted that far less than he wanted to be touching Molly, to taste his mouth again, to taste far more than that. "You don't know what I could do."
"I know you've gotten a serious dose of Moonweaver lily pollen," Molly said calmly. "I know there's no knowing how badly you're going to be affected, but it will get worse every time you get off until it peaks, and I know that no matter how long you manage to resist getting off, at some point the fever is going to render you incoherent and your body is going to take over. You're a lot more likely to hurt yourself or someone else if you let it go that long."
That matched what Caleb recalled reading once, long ago.
"I also know you can't beat me and Fjord both in a fight even when you've got your shit together," Molly went on, and Caleb glanced past him to see Fjord leaning against the far wall, arms crossed over his chest. "And I know that there's not actually gonna need to be any fighting, because if you want us to help you get off, we're willing to help. So nobody needs to get hurt at all."
Caleb blinked at them both, bewildered. "You—I can't ask—"
"You didn't ask," Molly said. "You asked Nott to lock you in, Nott checked on you, and she told us what's going on. And then Fjord and I volunteered to help out, because you're one of us and we look out for our own. Yasha's on deck if we need backup, and Jester's convinced she's gonna get some pros to handle it, which, hey, that'd be great if we can swing it. I feel like you might mind that less than the rest of us pitching in."
Caleb was aware that he was shivering a little, and also that his feet hurt very, very badly all of a sudden; he looked down and saw that Molly had the bloodied silver thread loosely coiled in his hand. He blinked stupidly at the sight, his brain still working on what Molly had said. "But you—that must be expensive?"
"Oh, yeah, I'm guessing there's no way we can afford it even with everyone contributing, but you know how Jester is," Molly said easily. "So that's why we talked over who can help you out. Me, I'm pretty easy, I've got very broad tastes that definitely include you, and I'm always willing to help out a friend in need, so I'm up for whatever."
Caleb looked past him to Fjord, who shrugged. "Can't say it's something I'd have been asking you for in any other circumstances, but I don't mind. Weird shit happens at sea, and you gotta be ready to help out a crewmate in a pinch."
"And Yasha can genuinely kind of take or leave sex most of the time, but she's not gonna let you suffer if she can help," Molly said. "But I figured Fjord and I would freak you out the least, because you seem like the type to let your chivalrous instincts get the better of you, and even if she could crack you in half with her pinky finger you think of Yasha as one of the ladies, don't you?"
Caleb grimaced. He mostly thought of Yasha as terrifying, but now that he considered it specifically—yes, there was a particular horror in the idea of hurting her that wasn't attached to, for instance, kissing Molly uninvited.
Though apparently it had not been quite as uninvited as all that.
Caleb blinked at Molly, focusing on him as that idea sank in, and Molly gave him an encouraging little smile. "So, while you're as close to your right mind as you're going to be, we're gonna talk about what you do and don't want to happen."
"I asked Nott to lock me in alone," Caleb pointed out. "That is what I want to happen. I don't want to hurt anyone, and I don't want to..."
He looked away, unable to think of a way to say it without confessing things he didn't want to think about, let alone speak of—especially not now, when he could feel this longing to draw someone close creeping through him. His thoughts were already beginning to be clouded by the urges of his body, and he knew it would only get worse.
"Well, we don't want to risk you dying and we don't want to wait until there's truly no other way to keep you alive but to fuck you when you're totally out of your head, so we're going to have to find a compromise. I was thinking," Molly said, "given how you set yourself up here, you might prefer to be restrained if we can find a way to do that that's not gonna injure you."
Caleb nodded, then winced. "I... yes, but I..."
He needed to be certain he couldn't hurt anyone. He also knew that once he let someone else restrain him, he would be helpless, and he would not remember afterward everything that had been done to him—and just thinking of that made him feel the walls of the asylum closing around him, as if he were falling back into those long dark years lost to his own clouded mind.
But this was now, and these people... there were ways he would never, ever be able to trust them, but he thought he actually could trust them to try to preserve his life and sanity. And what Molly said about his own preferences, and what Fjord said about his willingness, both rang true. And certainly Molly wouldn't betray Yasha to help Caleb; it was very clear where each of them stood in Molly's priorities.
Really there was no reason Caleb could expect any of them to help him, except that they were apparently willing to. He had not anticipated that at all, in what time he'd had to anticipate anything about this.
And still, he didn't know if he could let them.
"I think I might react badly," Caleb said into his knees. "To certain things. I... have some experience with being unable to... think straight, in situations where..."
He didn't actually know, was the worst thing. He really didn't know. It could have been nightmares he'd had during those confused and fogged-in years, or something he had feared would happen to him—or it might have happened, to him or to others around him. Likely it was some of each, and he would never know which blurred fragment of memory was which.
"Okay," Molly said. "That sounds like you've got some rough stuff in your past, or maybe you just have a reasonable fear of being hurt when you're vulnerable. We can say no penetration of your body, would that help?"
Caleb looked up, blinking. It couldn't be that simple, that matter-of-fact, except that Molly was giving him a patient, receptive look, and Molly had suggested it without Caleb having to find the words. "I think—yes, I think that would be my preference, if... yes. Please."
Molly nodded briskly. "And how do you feel about your parts going inside anybody else, if the other person is interested in using an orifice to stimulate you? And does it make a difference if it's a mouth, ass, or cunt? Man, woman, or—" Molly gestured to himself, "Agnostic? I'm told that matters to people sometimes."
Caleb blinked, experiencing a hideously distracting rush of memory and anticipation in response to just the words at the same time that some very calm and normal part of him was making a mental note to ask Molly what exactly agnostic meant in this context. Was that something he should have noticed and understood before now? "It... doesn't matter to me. If someone else wants. And if I can't hurt you, or... whomever."
He couldn't particularly imagine that question applying to Fjord, and could scarcely picture it for Yasha, though he supposed he should not make assumptions about anyone's preferences. And now, of course, he was very much imagining Fjord and Yasha in precisely that relation to himself, and had to press the back of his head against the wall, digging his fingernails into his calves. "Mollymauk, could you—do that again, and make me not think until you are ready to... do whatever you're going to do with me? I will not resist this time."
"Thought you'd never ask," Molly said, his voice taking on a familiar strange echo. Whatever he said next, Caleb forgot as soon as he heard it, as the words sent him down into blessed mental silence.
Chapter 2
Jester could see that the desk clerk remembered her from before, but didn't look exactly happy to see her. The clerk looked sort of apologetic. Jester could guess what that meant—after all, she'd promised to send word to the guards if Jester's package came, and the guards at the gate hadn't known anything about it when she asked.
She had asked in sort of a deliberately meandering way, to make sure they didn't pay too much attention to Beau wanting to come in with her, but still, she had gotten to the point eventually, and they had said they hadn't heard anything about a package for her at the Pillow Trove.
"Oh, no, I didn't come to ask about my package this time," Jester said airily, even though it would have been really helpful to have it today. That probably meant that money was going to be a Problem, but Jester was getting used to that, being out on her own, and anyway she knew enough to know that time was of the essence for Caleb, so she didn't have a lot of time to spend waiting around for someone to look everywhere to see if maybe the package was here. "I need to talk to Madam Luenna about maybe arranging some special services for a friend of mine who really needs some good attention as soon as possible."
The clerk's eyes darted to Beau, and Beau made a weird spluttery sound.
"No, no, not Beau," Jester put in. "I mean some attention would probably be good for her, but it's not really urgent right now. Could I speak to Madam Luenna, though? Please?"
"A moment," the clerk said, and disappeared after all. Jester sighed and leaned against the counter, hoping that this wasn't going to be like looking for her package.
Beau leaned next to her. "Uh, so... Madam Luenna is in charge around here?"
"Yes," Jester said. "She'll know who can help Caleb."
Jester glanced over at Beau, who was looking ill-at-ease in a way Jester had definitely seen before, whenever Beau was around particularly beautiful women. She got sort of angry, like they were being beautiful on purpose, at her. Which was particularly funny here, because of course everyone in the Pillow Trove would be beautiful on purpose, at their visitors, but it was part of their jobs so it was hardly a trick they were playing on anyone.
Jester knew that she probably shouldn't point it out to Beau, even if it was funny. Beau wouldn't think it was funny, and Beau was her friend, unlike the people Jester would have been happy to discomfit back home. Jester had friends now—lots of them! Although of course her very best friend was the same one as ever.
She heard a familiar chuckle as if it was coming from a little way behind her, and felt a familiar warmth. The Traveler knew, and he thought it was funny, and that was okay. He wouldn't tease Beau about it, so Beau wouldn't try to punch him.
Jester glanced over her shoulder, wondering if she could slip away from Beau and find a private spot to speak to the Traveler for a moment—she had a feeling she was going to need his help even if Madam Luenna turned out to be totally okay with helping Caleb for what they could afford to pay. Before she could try it, though, she heard footsteps descending the main staircase, and looked up to see Madam Luenna approaching.
"Oh, hi!" Jester called out, trotting over to meet her as she reached the bottom of the stairs. "Could we talk somewhere... discreet?"
Madam Luenna's eyebrows rose a little, and her mouth quirked into a semi-smile. "Discretion is our stock in trade, of course. This way."
She led Jester and Beau to a little office-type place not far from the front desk, which Jester thought was actually used mostly for an office and not just as the office setting for certain kinds of services. There were a lot of scrolls and inks and things on the desk that wouldn't be convenient to move, and the room was windowless and would be hard to air out thoroughly, but it didn't smell at all like sex things had been happening there, just like paper and leather and the little hearth fire.
Madam Luenna took a seat in an armchair away from the desk, and gestured for Jester and Beau to sit in the chairs nearby. Jester took the closest one and leaned across the arm to speak quietly to Madam Luenna. "I have a friend—who is not me or Beau—who has been exposed to a certain substance and needs to have a lot of sex about it as soon as possible. You know what I mean?"
She didn't want to say sex pollen now that she knew that Molly didn't like that name for it and it was probably sort of disrespectful to the Moonweaver, but she also didn't want to say Moonweaver when the Moonweaver wasn't supposed to be spoken of in the Empire. Before today she wouldn't have cared and just would have called it what she'd heard her mama's colleagues calling it, but Molly was her friend, and even if he wasn't here she didn't want to say things he wouldn't like.
Having more than one friend was really complicated, but Jester thought she was getting the hang of it pretty well.
Madam Luenna was frowning thoughtfully now. "Are you quite sure these effects were caused by a substance, and not by a spell or a curse? It would rather alter the case if either of those were a possibility."
"Well, yeah," Jester said. "Because if it's a spell it might just wear off on its own after a few hours or a day at most, and probably isn't powerful enough to actually kill him unless the caster was like, super motivated to mess him up, but if it was a curse then there might be a weird condition required to solve it like probably true love or some really strange riddle thing, and in that case he really might die, even just of exhaustion."
Madam Luenna looked faintly impressed. Jester preened a little, and then stopped to think about what exactly she knew about what was going on with Caleb and how it had started. Nott had said that Caleb had been exposed to something—and, actually, she had seemed like she knew about the pollen. Nott liked to do alchemy stuff, Jester recalled, so she might have learned about it that way. Goblins probably didn't care very much whether a plant was illegal in the Eempire, so maybe goblin alchemists made the strong distilled forms of the stuff.
"Pretty sure it was the pollen—substance," Jester amended hastily. "It was an accidental exposure, and if it was a spell or a curse..." Caleb would have known the difference. He was probably still in the lucid phase, from what Nott had said, and if there were a spell or curse involved he would probably have told Nott that so she would either not worry about him so much or would start searching for how to solve the curse. "No, I think we would know if it was something else, so I'm pretty sure this is from the substance. Yes."
"Mm," Madam Luenna said. "Well, as you are probably aware, the substance which causes those effects is highly illegal in the Empire, and while we do of course have a very cordial relationship with the crownsguard which spares us from many tedious regulatory concerns, that particular one would still carry a considerable risk for us. It's a service we can only offer to the most trusted of our patrons and is priced accordingly."
"Ah," Jester said.
That was a soft no, her mama had taught her. Madam Luenna was telling her she couldn't afford it instead of saying we don't trust you or your friend isn't worth risking all that trouble for. If Jester had unlimited funds she might be able to push through and make Madam Luenna reconsider, but she could understand that just because Caleb was in trouble, that didn't mean people who didn't know him were going to help him. They weren't Caleb's friends. Jester and Beau and Molly and Yasha and Fjord and Nott were. It was up to them; that was what Madam Luenna really meant.
"How much is accordingly," Beau demanded, leaning around Jester to stare at Madam Luenna.
Madam Luenna took a breath, glancing at Jester, and Jester smiled as apologetically as she could, reaching over to squeeze Beau's shoulder, hopefully hard enough to make her drop the question. Making Madam Luenna uncomfortable or making the whole conversation as awkward as possible wouldn't help now.
"No, Beau, it's okay, if we have to ask we can't afford it. But, Madam Luenna, if I just wanted to get a room here for me and a bunch of my friends to have like, a hard core sex party because we really want our friend to have lots and lots of sex because it's like, his birthday or a sex holiday or something, and we needed to have a pretty plain room with like, sturdy furnishings so we don't break anything, and maybe also a good set of attachment points on the bed..."
Madam Luenna relaxed a little at that, sitting back in her chair slightly, and Jester let up her grip on Beau and sat back too. She had done that right, then. Now they could negotiate for what was possible, even if it wasn't what Jester had hoped for. Mama had taught her that people with highly specialized skills had to be paid for highly specialized work—and she knew that even aside from the situation Caleb would probably be what even Mama would have considered a difficult client. Jester definitely would not want to be so rude as to try to bargain down to some minimum rate when asking Madam Luenna's people to deal with him.
"Yes, we could arrange that. For a special-use room like that—how many friends do you think you'll want to attend the party?"
"Oh, like, six aside from me," Jester said promptly. Maybe seven, but the Traveler never took up space unless he wanted to.
"Then let's call it twenty-five gold a night, with bath and laundry service included, and non-alcoholic beverages supplied throughout. You must remember to encourage everyone to stay hydrated when hosting that type of party, especially if it goes on for an extended period."
Jester nodded. They could definitely manage that; it wouldn't run more than three days at the outside, even with some time to rest and bathe and have their laundry done at the end, and someone—Beau, probably, or Jester herself—could go to the bakery or another little shop to get food when they needed it, so that wouldn't be too expensive.
"What about unguents," Jester put in. "I assume you can supply those?"
Madam Luenna looked a little amused again, possibly at how Jester lingered on the word. It was a fun word to say. "Unguents as in lubricants, or as in salves for minor irritations afterward?"
"Oh, probably some of each."
"For an additional gold per night, we'll assure that appropriate supplies are stocked in the room, and will resupply as needed during your stay."
Jester nodded firmly. "Then I think that is all we'll need. We'll be back later today to take the room."
"Let's get you the key now," Madam Luenna said, "so you can go straight there when your friend is ready to have his party."
Beau followed Jester back out of the Tri-Spire and halfway to the Leaky Tap before the tumble of thoughts in her brain finally spat out actual words. "Attachment points? You're planning on tying Caleb to something?"
It wasn't what Beau had meant to ask, but it was still better than the question that had been loudest in her mind: It's totally normal to swallow your tongue a little when Madam Luenna looks directly at you, right?
"Oh!" Jester said, and stopped right there in the street, shrugging off her cute pink bag and kneeling down to rummage through it. "Yes, usually at some point in the process it's necessary to restrain the sufferer so he doesn't hurt himself or anyone else, and you don't want to be trying to improvise when the time comes."
Beau opened her mouth to say something to that, and the words died on her tongue as Jester triumphantly hauled out a set of manacles.
"We should take these to Pumat Sol," Jester said, holding the manacles up for Beau to take. Beau took them, for lack of any better idea what to do in this situation. "I'll bet he can fix them so Caleb can't get out of them too easily."
Beau looked around to see if anyone had noticed her with her arms full of chains and Jester talking about making sure the person they chained up couldn't escape. She caught one dwarf giving them a disturbed look, but no one else was paying any attention to them. Beau smiled with all her teeth and the dwarf moved on.
Score one for those friendly manners Fjord was always talking about.
"Come on, Beau," Jester said, tugging at her elbow. "We don't have time to dawdle!"
Beau swallowed a snarl and followed Jester to the Pentamarket and into Pumat's shop.
Pumat, of course, spotted the chains immediately. Two of him did, actually, both giving Beau dubious looks. Beau glared back and hoisted the chains a little higher in her arms; she wasn't hiding them, she wasn't doing anything wrong, and she wasn't going to let some enchanter with four bodies intimidate her.
"Pumat!" Jester said, bouncing up to the counter where one of them was standing. "Do you have any enchantments that could make sure my friend can't get out of these manacles or do a lot of magic with them on? We need it for sex purposes, we're going to have a lot of sex and my friend is like, super repressed and needs some help to relax."
The Pumat behind the counter blinked slowly at Jester for a moment, then looked up straight at Beau. "That okay with you?"
"I mean, whatever, it's not really—" Beau stopped and redirected as she realized what Pumat meant. "Why does everyone think—not me. Caleb."
"Ah," Pumat said, looking back and forth now between her and Jester as another Pumat drifted as-if-casually out from the back room. "And how does Caleb feel about that?"
"He's fine with it, of course!" Jester said cheerfully, like she couldn't see that Pumat was half a second away from casting Hold Person on both of them and yelling for the crownsguard. Which was sort of nice, Beau supposed, because an enchanter who didn't care if you were going to use his products to rape somebody wasn't an enchanter she would want to have given as much money to as they collectively had.
On the other hand, she really did not want to have the crownsguard called on her and Jester today. Or ever.
All the Pumats in the room focused on Jester as she went on, "He really really needs to, he just gets nervous, so obviously we will talk everything out with him beforehand because he's our friend and we are not horrible people, but he's sort of busy right now and couldn't come to the store with us so we're just handling the supplies."
"Mm-hm," Pumat said, giving Jester a more skeptical look than Beau had ever seen anyone maintain in the face of Jester's whole... Jester-ness. "There is an enchantment that we've already developed for this type of purpose, but it will only work as long as everything is fully consensual. The manacles will only lock when the person wearing them closes them, and they will impart the codeword to him and open again when he says it. They will also give him a non-verbal code to use if he can't speak."
"Oh, that should be fine," Jester agreed promptly. "And he won't light anything on fire if he just sort of gets startled?"
"His casting ability will be dampened while the manacles are on, but if he really feels like he needs to cast a spell, it will be easy for him to get loose and do it."
"Yeah, that's good," Beau put in. "That's exactly what we want, so he doesn't get hurt and neither does anyone else. We wouldn't want anything bad to happen to our friend."
"That's what we like to hear. Let's see those manacles, then," Pumat said, putting out one large hand, and Beau stalked over and dumped the chains onto his hand and the counter.
"Mm, these have been enchanted before," Pumat said, and another Pumat moved closer, leaning close to look at the chains and the runes engraved on the closures before looking up—one looking at Jester, the other at Beau. "These were used for prisoner transport."
"Yeah, we found them on a dead guy," Jester said blithely, while Beau took a careful step back from the counter, seriously considering abandoning Jester to her fate and making a run for it. "I mean, he'd been dead a really long time, he was just, like, a skeleton, so we didn't think anyone would mind if we took the manacles, and now it turns out we need some, so it all worked out!"
"That does seem like a bit of serendipity," Pumat said, glancing back down at the manacles. "Although if you were planning to use them in the kind of classic bondage style, these wouldn't be the best design. They're not really made for binding someone in place, just for limiting movement."
"Oh," Jester deflated a little for the first time. "Do we have to go get different ones? I guess we could ask the blacksmith, we just don't have a lot of time..."
Two of the Pumats studied Jester intently from different angles, while the third whispered in one of their ears. Finally the nearest one said slowly, "Is there... some kind of important reason why you need these manacles right away?"
Beau fought to keep her face blank and resisted the urge to slap a hand over Jester's mouth, which would give the game away pretty fucking badly. Madam Luenna had been cool about the pollen situation, but Pumat worked for the fucking Cerberus Assembly. They absolutely could not discuss substances sacred to forbidden gods with him. Beau had been pretty sure Jester knew that before they came in here, but...
"I mean, just that we already got the hotel room and everything," Jester said, in an airy tone that screamed trying too hard across Beau's senses. "But I guess if it's going to take longer then it's just going to take longer."
"I see," Pumat said, two of him still staring at Jester while she didn't make eye contact with anyone. "Well, in that case, I would hate to create a scheduling problem, and it so happens that I have a set of manacles in back that would do what you need them to do, all ready to go."
Jester's chin jerked up, lips parting to ask why he hadn't said so from the start, or possibly why he had never offered to sell them sex manacles any other time they'd visited.
"Specialized item," Pumat said with a shrug, while another one went into the back room. "Not gonna go offering it to folks who just want weapons and healing potions and wizard paper and whatnot. But it does seem to happen, from time to time, that someone just completely forgets to buy the manacles beforehand when scheduling an event like yours, so sooner or later it pays off to have a set on hand. If you want to trade me those to make my next set with, I could let you have this set for..."
"Four hundred gold," said the Pumat coming out from the back with a box that might as well have had DISCREET PACKAGING stamped on every side. "And as it's quite an easy item to scour clean, we'll buy it back for three hundred if you don't want to keep it for future use."
Jester bit her lip, looking over at Beau with a genuinely troubled expression, and Beau shrugged sharply. "We need them? Gonna ruin the whole... theme party you had planned otherwise?"
Jester nodded. "I just... I don't have all of..."
"Yeah, yeah, I got half," Beau said, stepping up and reaching for her coin purse. "We'll get the others to pay shares later or... whatever. Let's just get what we need and get going."
Yasha and Nott were leaning against the wall near the back of the Leaky Tap, where they could keep watch on the street and also the back alley, where the entrance to the hidden cellar was. Jester hurried toward them, aware of Beau trailing a little behind.
"Is that where Caleb is?" Jester asked, glancing toward the entrance. "Is someone with him?"
"Molly and Fjord," Nott said, wringing her hands a little. "Did you...?"
"I got us a room at the Pillow Trove," Jester said, like she'd never planned to do anything else. "For whoever wants to help Caleb—he'll be safe there, and we can keep him still so he won't hurt himself or anyone else."
Nott nodded, like she'd forgotten there was any other plan and so Jester didn't have to explain anything. "Molly and Fjord and Yasha are going to... help him, so if there's a safe place I think that's all we need. How will we get him there, though? He's not at his most... presentable."
"Oh, I had an idea about that," Jester said, glad that the others had already settled who would help with the messy parts. "Why don't you all go get ready to go, and I'll talk to Molly and Fjord and Caleb and see if we can do my idea or if we need to do something else."
Nott looked up at her for a moment. "Is it a good idea?"
It wasn't actually an entire idea at all, but if it worked it would definitely be the best idea. "Maybe? If it's not I think it will be clear pretty quickly that it won't work and we can think of something else."
"Tri-Spire has to get supplies somehow," Yasha put in quietly. "If we clean the cart out really well, get some stuff to look like goods, say we're making a delivery to the Pillow Trove..."
"Ohh, that is a good idea!" Jester said brightly. "Um, except... we left that manticore head in the cart, didn't we."
"Yeah, there would probably have to be a lot of cleaning," Yasha agreed. "And we don't know how much time Caleb has. So maybe... maybe that isn't our first plan."
"Right, so, I will try my thing first and then if not maybe we can ask Pumat Sol to do that little spell he did to make Caleb all clean to our cart?" Jester offered. Pumat had been pretty sympathetic in the end; Jester was pretty sure he knew why they had needed the manacles in a hurry, but he hadn't asked even as many questions about it as Madam Luenna had, and he'd taken care to be sure that Caleb couldn't get hurt. He might be willing to clean out their cart and make it a pretty color, for a little more money.
Of course, they did not have much more money on hand right now, or at least Jester didn't. But she wasn't going to worry about that right now. She had something that was almost a plan.
"Okay, so now we have a plan about plans!" Jester said brightly. "Go get ready for the Pillow Trove!"
All three of them looked dubious, but Jester made the sort of elegant shooing motion her mama would make when she was being very nice about trying to get rid of someone. None of the others looked any less dubious, but they went, and that was what Jester needed.
Once she was alone, she could duck around the corner into the empty alley, shut her eyes, and whisper, "Traveler? Are you here? I really really really need your help for my friend Caleb."
"He does seem to be in a predicament," the familiar voice said, and Jester squeaked a little and started to turn, only to feel his hand on her shoulder, keeping her still and facing away from him. "And so much chaos and mischief might just call for a little balancing... subtlety."
Jester bounced on her toes. "Balance is very important."
"So it is," the Traveler murmured, and she felt a brush of air as something swept by behind her, and then a weight settling over her shoulders, bearing a familiar warmth and a familiar scent.
She gasped, reaching up to touch the Traveler's green cloak.
"If he wears that," the Traveler murmured, "no one but you will be able to see him or notice he's there at all, and you can take him wherever he needs to go. But I'll need that back, child. It isn't the sort of thing that can be released into the material plane for long without... consequences."
"Of course, of course," Jester whispered. "Thank you, Traveler! I will tell Caleb all about you, and I will draw you so many pictures..."
"Oh, yes, I expect this will be quite a spectacle. I'll be interested to know which parts of it you find most important to commemorate."
Jester nodded thoughtfully. She had seen, here and there over the years, a lot of sex happening. But she'd never been in a room with friends of hers while they were having sex. Unless—
"Traveler, do you ever—" Jester started to turn, felt the weight of the cloak swinging around her, and remembered she shouldn't—but the alley was empty again.
"I'll definitely draw all the best parts!" Jester promised, and then she ran for the cellar door.
Molly stared at Caleb and felt a lot like he had when he'd been new enough to the circus that his family's various stunts had still been startling and irresistible to watch. It was a particular blend of admiration and disbelief that any mortal person could do that. It left Molly with a marveling sense of kinship with Caleb that was probably not quite the proper reaction to be having right now.
"How long's it been?" Molly asked without looking away from him.
"Since the last time you asked me that, or since Caleb checked the fuck out of this plane of existence?"
"Either," Molly said, ignoring Fjord's tone.
Fjord huffed and finally came over to crouch beside him, just out of arm's reach from Caleb, who was slumped against the wall, legs sprawled heedlessly with his hands resting palm-down on his thighs, no tension in his fingers. It was a shocking contrast to the straining hardness of his erection.
"Fucked if I know," Fjord muttered. "Caleb's the one with the clockwork always running in his head. Why don't you ask him?"
Molly gestured emphatically. "Are you seeing this? That's not me doing that, Fjord. That spell has to have died by now, and probably within a few minutes after I cast it. This is just him now."
"What'd you tell him to do, anyway?"
"Go away inside, where nothing can touch you," Molly repeated, in common this time. "And apparently he knew right where he was going in order to get there, because—" Molly reached out and snapped his fingers a few inches from Caleb's nose.
Caleb didn't so much as twitch. He was barely breathing. Honestly the blood-flush of his dick and its rigid state were the strongest signs of life Caleb was showing right now.
The door slammed open behind them, and Molly jumped to his feet, whirling around to stand shoulder to shoulder with Fjord, facing whoever was coming in and concealing Caleb behind them.
There was... definitely someone coming in. Molly squinted, staring, and he was really pretty sure there was someone there, but the harder he looked the more his head swam, and—
Jester giggled and appeared suddenly, sweeping some uncanny darkness off herself and bundling it into her arms. At Molly's side, Fjord jumped all over again. "Jester? What the hell—"
"I borrowed something from a friend of mine," Jester said cheerfully. "For Caleb, so we can get him to the Pillow Trove. I got us a room, and they will keep us supplied with hydrating beverages and unguents, and I got some manacles from Pumat Sol..." Jester knelt on the floor and slung her bag off, keeping the cloak of possibly-divine invisibility bundled up under her arm.
"Hang on, back up to this friend of yours," Fjord said.
"The Traveler?" Molly put in. He was as surprised as Fjord that Jester's god might turn out to be that tangibly helpful—or, in all honesty, not her imaginary friend from childhood—but it did seem like the obvious conclusion to draw from the facts before them.
"Yes!" Jester said brightly, flashing a huge smile at Molly as she reached into her pink haversack and pulled out a rattling mess of chains to show them. "We shouldn't put these on him here, I guess? Unless we need them to get him there. Why's he being so quiet?"
Jester leaned around them, and when Fjord leaned to one side like he wanted to block her view, Molly huffed and stepped aside. She'd told them where she grew up, and she was old enough to look if she wanted to; no doubt she'd be getting nearly as much of an eyeful as any of them shortly.
"Ooh, that's nice," Jester said, which Molly had to agree with—not that Jester had seen any of their dicks to best advantage before now, but Caleb did have a dick best described as "nice." Not too big, not too small, unadorned and straightforward the way human genitalia mostly was: nice.
Molly did not look over to see how Fjord was taking Jester's pronouncement.
Jester frowned and dropped the manacles when she got closer, holding her hands up between her and Caleb and moving them this way and that—not like she was blocking out the sight of him, but like she was checking scale and proportions with her fingers as a guide. "Ohh, Nott is right, Caleb really needs to eat more. He's malnourished."
Molly glanced back. Caleb definitely looked like he could use a nice layer of fat over his ropy muscles and jutting bones, but Jester hadn't remarked on it at the bathhouse, or any other time. He couldn't resist asking, "Is there something about seeing him with his dick hard that makes that more obvious?"
"Yeah, it's not actually that big, but it looks so big," Jester said, still frowning. "But it's an optical illusion because the rest of him is so thin."
"See, I would've said it's the fact that you can see all his ribs even from the front," Fjord said slowly. "But yeah, agreed, if we get him through this alive we really oughta make sure he's not skipping meals or anything. Molly, any thoughts on how we're gonna—"
"Caleb!" Jester half-shouted, darting between them to kneel right in front of Caleb.
Caleb's whole body jolted backward like he'd been hit with lightning, his eyes flashing open and focusing immediately on Jester's face—so apparently that was one way to pull him back to reality. Molly wondered if it was something in the tone of her voice, or just... Jester.
Caleb's face flushed dark red instantly, and all his limbs drew in, his knees clamping tight to pin his hands in place. He was pressing back into the wall like it might let him escape inside.
"Jester," he said hoarsely. "You shouldn't—I can't—"
"I know, but it's going to be okay," Jester assured him firmly, and somehow Caleb actually did seem to be assured, which was not the reaction that Molly had gotten right out of the gate. "I got you this special cloak to wear! When you wear it no one can see you but me, so we can walk you right into the Tri-Spire and go to the Pillow Trove, okay? Once we get there it's all taken care of, and then you don't have to worry about anything."
Caleb's eyes darted to Molly and Fjord. "You—you said—Jester wasn't—"
"Ah, yes, Caleb has delicate sensibilities, my dear," Molly put in, tugging Jester back a little. "Can I put the cloak on him, or are you and Caleb the only ones who can touch it?"
Jester tilted her head, studying Molly. "I think, as long as you understand that this is a gift from the Traveler to help Caleb, and we have to return it as soon as we get Caleb there safely—"
Molly gave a solemn nod, raising a hand in some vague approximation of an oath-making gesture.
"Then it should be fine. But I will stay in the room, so you don't lose Caleb once it's on."
"We certainly don't want to lose Caleb," Molly agreed, holding out a hand for the cloak. It felt mostly just like a cloak in his hand, except that he couldn't quite fix his eyes on it. He stopped trying and looked to Caleb, who was squinting uncertainly at it.
"Close your eyes, keep it simple," Molly advised him. "Just like if you were looking through Frumpkin, right? All you have to do is hold Jester's hand and follow, and we'll worry about getting you there."
Caleb nodded and a few seconds later he closed his eyes and held a hand out. Molly tugged him up.
"Oh, your wrists! Caleb!" Jester darted in to cast a healing spell, and the nasty little cuts the thread had left around Caleb's wrists and ankles faded to nothing as Caleb got to his feet. He didn't straighten up fully, staying hunched around his belly like he—well, like he had a nasty cramp somewhere in his midsection, which was probably about what that hard-on felt like by now.
Molly settled the cloak over Caleb like he was covering an animal's cage to quiet it, and the effect was oddly similar; he faintly heard Caleb give a sigh that sounded like relief, and the shadow he couldn't quite focus on seemed to get a little taller.
"Perfect," Jester said brightly. "That's it, Caleb, you're doing great. Come on!"
She headed for the door with one hand held out and trailing a little behind her, and Molly fell in beside Fjord and followed.
Chapters: 1&2/7
Fandom: Critical Role (Web Series)
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Polynein, The Mighty Nein & Caleb Widogast, Nott | Veth Brenatto & Caleb Widogast, Mollymauk Tealeaf/Caleb Widogast, Fjord/Caleb Widogast, Caleb Widogast/Yasha, Mollymauk Tealeaf/Yasha, pre-Beauregard Lionett/Yasha - Relationship, pre-Jester Lavorre/Fjord Stone
Additional Tags: Sex Pollen, Fuck Or Die, Porn IS the plot, Platonic Sex, Explicit Sexual Content, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Imperfect Consent, Bondage, Consensual Non-Consent, Dissociation, Author Did Not Check How Many Spell Slots Anyone Used, Gangbang Doula Nott the Brave, Mollymauk Tealeaf's Religious Beliefs, Useless Lesbian Beauregard Lionett, Oblivious Yasha Nydoorin, Jester's Sketchbook After Dark, Fjord Has Seen Worse Things Happen at Sea, The Real Money Shot Was the Friends We Made Along the Way, The Traveler Divinely Intervening Before Jester Gets That Spell Because What Are Best Friends For, Nott's Body Dysphoria, Characters Trying to be Safe Sane and Consensual, In an Unsafe Insane and Dubiously Consensual Situation
"Caleb is having a... problem," Nott said. "He needs some help, but it's something that should be discussed discreetly."
During their downtime in Zadash during Episode 16, Caleb gets hit with sex pollen and the Mighty Nein look after their own.
"Oooh, is it a butt problem?" Jester asked, leaning in with obvious interest. Fjord and Molly looked worried and thoughtful; Beau and Yasha looked wary.
"It's not... not a butt problem."
Chapter 1
Chapter 1
If Caleb had been thinking more clearly, he would have realized that Nott's reaction was inevitable, and probably even that the rest of it would follow from there.
Of course, if Caleb had been thinking perfectly clearly, he would not have been wet and naked on the floor of the hidden cellar under the Leaky Tap with silver thread coiled firmly around his wrists and ankles, and the issue would not have arisen.
He was aware of a pang of regret as he maneuvered the bit of copper wire he'd carefully left in his own reach before using the silver thread on himself. This was not the way he'd wanted to announce to Nott that he'd learned her favorite little spell.
"Nott, it is me, Caleb. I am in the place where we spent the night when the others were annoyed with me, and I need to stay here alone for a while. Please lock the door from the outside so no one else will come in. I will let you know when I need to come out. You can reply to this message."
Nott would do what he needed. She had never let him down. Caleb focused on that, and on keeping very still. The floor was dirt, gritty and cold against his bare skin, but the wall was rough stone. He braced both hands against it, and had an unpleasantly vivid flash—not anticipation but memory—of what such a wall, and his hands, would look like when he had forgotten himself enough to claw at it until he couldn't anymore.
He closed his eyes, pushing away that unhelpful fragment of memory. He was not truly confined here; he was making a choice for the good of the group. Nott would—
"Caleb? Caleb, what are you doing down here? You don't even have a light!"
Scheisse. "It's all right, Nott, I don't want one. I just need to—no!"
He flattened himself harder to the wall as he felt Nott approach, close enough that in this state he could smell her, and her closeness stirred the air against his skin. His mind filled with the impulse to reach for her, to uncover the skin she kept shrouded in clothes and wrapped in bandages, to—
No. He would do no such thing. He kept still. Nott was his friend, his little sister, his student, and he would never mistreat her, no matter what thoughts went through his head.
She was still coming closer, heedless of the danger she did not understand. "Caleb, you're naked. And clean. Sort of—you're getting all dirty again lying on the ground like that."
"I—I got something on me," Caleb said, trying not to breathe through his mouth, trying not to scream no matter how the desperation clawed inside his chest. No one ever listened to the words you said once you started screaming, and if his words weren't enough nothing would be. "I had to wash it off but it affected me a little—don't come any closer, Nott, if you get too close I'll hurt you, and I could not bear that."
"You got something..." Nott trailed off, and Caleb's fingers curled in against the wall as he struggled to keep himself perfectly still. He was aware of the tensing of his muscles, aware of how the whole of his body was bare to her without even the shield of bathwater or his usual accumulation of grime. He curled in a little more, but it only made him more aware of leaving his vulnerable backside available.
He panted a little, his mind filling up with useless frantic circling. He startled back to awareness when Nott spoke again. "I think I understand. I won't let you do anything bad, Caleb. I'll take care of you."
"You can't—"
"I'll go, for now," Nott said, before he could beg her to. "Here, I'll take your books and put them somewhere safe. What did you do with your clothes?"
"Burned," Caleb croaked, biting his tongue on the urge to make her promise not to look into the books. If she wanted to she could have a hundred times over by now.
"Oh," Nott said. "Right. You just... try to relax, Caleb. It's going to be okay. I won't let anything bad happen."
Caleb didn't believe that, but it was kind of her to say it, and when he heard the lock snap into place he knew he was alone, so at least he could stop holding on quite so hard.
It was still early in the day when Nott returned to the common room of the Leaky Tap after stashing Caleb's books safely away. It had been barely light out when Caleb told her he was going to look for some supplies he needed, and it apparently hadn't taken him long, on his own in the city, to get into quite a lot of trouble.
On the bright side, that meant the others were all still sitting around a table, munching their breakfasts or stealthily pocketing food for later, so Nott didn't have to search for help. She didn't know how they were going to help, but she was at least seventy percent certain that they would. Normally she wouldn't care what they did, would figure she and Caleb together could handle anything, but given the nature of the problem, she knew they couldn't handle this.
This time, she and Caleb really did need the others.
"Nott!" Jester welcomed her brightly, patting the bench beside her. "Where's Caleb? Here, have some breakfast."
Nott sat and ate a little from the plate Jester pushed to her, looking around at the others. None of them but Jester were paying attention to her; none of them were worried about Caleb. But they weren't worried about anything else, either. They'd kept their bargain with the Gentleman, so they would be safe, and everyone seemed to have left behind the fight about Caleb almost stealing those scrolls.
She hoped they had. She hoped they weren't about to have another fight like that one, but she had a feeling that however Caleb had gotten himself into this predicament, it hadn't involved much thinking about what was safest and best for the group.
Still, there was no use putting it off. Nott cleared her throat and stood up on the bench, so that she was looking the others directly in the eyes. It caught all their attention, and she wanted to back away from the weight of all those eyes on her—but Caleb needed this.
"Caleb is having a... problem," Nott said. "He needs some help, but it's something that should be discussed discreetly."
"Oooh, is it a butt problem?" Jester asked, leaning in with obvious interest. Fjord and Molly looked worried and thoughtful; Beau and Yasha looked wary.
"It's not... not a butt problem," Nott said to Jester, remembering all too clearly the sight of Caleb from behind, entirely naked, ropy muscles tensing as he tried to pull away from her when he was already up against the wall. The smell of his arousal, and that faint floral note she'd only smelled once before, bringing back a flood of memories of Yeza, equal parts excited and terrified over the rare ingredient he'd acquired.
It was the pollen of a particular plant, he'd told her, exceptionally rare and illegal in most places, terribly potent. He had had it sealed in glass, but had unstopped the jar, and she had caught the faintest whiff of the smell before she got her wits about her. She had scolded Yeza for being reckless and convinced him to burn it, to keep them safe.
Safe. She should have—
She should not be thinking of him. Not now.
"Not not a butt problem?! That means it kind of is a butt problem," Jester said excitedly. "Is it—"
"This is the opposite of discreet, Jester," Molly cut in, when Nott would have tried to answer her again. "Come on, upstairs if we're going to talk about this. Is he in your room, Nott?"
"He's safe," Nott deflected. "For now. Let's go upstairs," she added hastily, when Beau and Jester both seemed about to ask more questions.
"Yeah, come on, we're not doing this here," Fjord said firmly, making herding gestures to the others, and Nott hung back a little to be sure the rest were going up the stairs before she hurried along. They wound up in Molly and Fjord's room, and Fjord came in last, shutting the door and then leaning against it.
Nott was uncomfortably reminded of the moment Molly and Fjord had trapped her here, luring her with the illusion of a jeweled flask, but Jester was bouncing cheerfully on Molly's bed, and Molly sprawled beside her and said, "So, Nott, what's our wizard gone and done now?"
The others all focused on her; even Jester stopped bouncing.
"He's been... exposed," Nott said, wondering how much knowledge she dared betray. "To a... substance. A powerful substance that is affecting him. Powerfully."
"Ohh, like in a sex way?" Jester said. "Like he has to have lots and lots and lots of sex or else his brain will explode or his liver will burn up inside him or something?"
Nott wondered for half a second how Jester had gotten to that conclusion so fast and then realized that Jester probably knew more about alchemical substances related to sex than most people who weren't highly specialized—or occasionally less-than-law-abiding—alchemists or courtesans. "I... think it's something like that. I don't know how severe it is. He might not die. He wants us all to leave him alone, but I can tell he's already suffering badly. He was worried he might hurt me, so he didn't want me near him, and I don't think it's good to agitate him in this condition."
"That is definitely sex pollen," Jester said, and Molly said sharply, "Moonweaver lily pollen."
Everyone's attention shifted to Molly, who huffed a sigh, waving a hand as if to dismiss his own vehemence. "It's sacred to the Moonweaver, which means it's illegal to cultivate in the Empire, even more than the distillations are controlled everywhere else. If Caleb managed to find someone's secret crop of Moonweaver lilies, they're either going to be upset that someone's fucked up their ritual preparations or upset that someone fucked up their extremely lucrative illegal botanicals. Either way, if there's any chance they can track Caleb from the growing site to here, he's not going to be safe for long, no matter how light a dose he got."
"And the crownsguard probably won't be best pleased with Caleb or the growers," Fjord put in. "So we're definitely going to need to hide him somewhere while he gets this out of his system. Which, uh, do we need volunteers for that?"
"We should see if we can get professionals to do it," Jester put in. "My mama didn't usually take those cases because she's like, way too specialized, but she gave advice to the people who did—they had to work in teams, because someone who's gotten hit with..." She looked over at Molly and enunciated carefully, "Moonweaver lily pollen... takes a lot of attention. Like, a lot. I bet the Pillow Trove has people for that!"
Nott considered how much the Pillow Trove was likely to charge for something like that, and whether Caleb would even be able to get into the Tri-Spire in his current state. Getting him through the sewers might be even more difficult than getting him through the gate.
"I'll go talk to them, I'm sure they can get Caleb in right away," Jester said cheerfully. "And if my mom's package has come we won't have any trouble paying for it! So I should definitely go see about that." She bounced right to her feet.
"You gonna go alone?" Fjord asked, shifting a little against the door.
"Oh," Jester said, looking around. "Does anyone want to..."
"I'll come with," Beau said quickly. "Just... keep you company or whatever. If you want."
"Sure, Beau!" Jester skipped over to the door, and Fjord stepped aside to let her out, with Beau on her heels.
Beau cast a glance back into the room, looking exceedingly dubious, and said softly, like she didn't want Jester to hear her, "If it's not, uh..."
"Yeah, we'll make some plans," Fjord said, equally quietly. "You just make sure we get Jester back in one piece. Information might be useful, if we've gotta do this ourselves."
"See if they'll sell some supplies, if nothing else," Molly put in. "Jester will know what, I have no doubt."
"Sure," Beau said. "Yeah, of course. Supplies. Seeya."
Nott had a strong suspicion that Beau had absolutely no idea what kinds of supplies might be required and also that she would punch someone, several times, rather than admit it.
When the door closed behind Beau and Jester, Molly sat up and clapped his hands together sharply, a bright grin on his face. "So! Volunteers?"
Molly ushered Fjord and Nott out of the room once they'd settled the basics, but instead of following them, he shut the door and turned to Yasha.
She sighed. She'd known, before she even spoke up to volunteer, that Molly was going to want to talk about it; he knew just enough to know that this could be complicated for her.
"It's fine," she said, before he got a word out. "What I ran from—it wasn't anything like this."
Molly blinked a few times, studying her. "Anything like what?"
She was going to explain all of it to him sometime, and maybe much sooner than she'd imagined, after this. But not right now, when they had to be focused on helping Caleb.
Yasha waved a hand. "Anything like... having to have sex with a friend who happens to be male to keep him from coming to harm. If that was all they'd asked of me, I'd never have left."
She couldn't think too hard about that, about how easily the Skyspear might have kept her, might have let her love who she loved, and still arranged for the proper babies or whatever else the tribe needed from her. If the Skyspear had been willing to do that, then home would have been a lot more like the circus, or the Nein, and everything would have been different.
Molly was nodding slowly. "Okay. I just... I know you don't talk about it, and I don't know what this might bring up. It's going to be intense, I know that much."
Yasha nodded, giving him a look as much like the one he'd given her as she could manage.
She wasn't going to ask him whether he was going to be all right with this—he had already put himself in charge of the whole thing, and he was the most knowledgeable of any of them about what was going to happen, even if she wasn't sure how much he knew or precisely how he knew it.
Molly sighed. He clearly knew exactly what she wasn't asking, just as she'd known what he was worried about for her sake.
Gustav had once taken Molly away for a day and a night and another day, to visit a hidden temple of the Moonweaver. Molly had come back with some beautiful blue-white lilies with the pollen thoroughly stripped from their red-brown stamens. He had given them to Yasha, to keep in her book. He had seemed more confident, after that, that his lost memories were nothing he could or should seek to repair, and he had been firm in his devotion to the Moonweaver ever since. But it wasn't something he talked about.
"It wasn't this," Molly said. "This is very sacred, when it's done properly. I was just a soul in need of some counsel who got a bit nosy about all the other... kinds of counseling the temple might do. The cleric told me about it—I think they thought I might be interested in a cleric's life myself? And it was a little tempting, but... Gustav was waiting. You were waiting. The whole world was waiting."
Yasha nodded. "You could always... go visit again sometime. Take Caleb, maybe, to talk about it with that cleric, if..."
Molly nodded, then visibly shook off the thought. "If, sure. But first we get him and all of us through it alive and more or less as sane as we started, and that is probably as much as we can hope for today."
"Yeah," Yasha said. "Well, I've been told that sex and other intense things are best with friends who won't mind if you cry all over them in the middle of it."
Yasha didn't know which of the two of them was more likely to spill awkward secrets or complicated feelings over the others in the process of getting Caleb through this, but she didn't think Molly was only worried about her.
He smiled at her, wide and bright, the smile that she knew, and he knew she knew, covered up all his uncertainties. "That sounds like something someone very wise must have told you. I like that."
Yasha reached out and took his hand. "Very, very wise, yes. Now let's get this show on the road."
"Caleb, sweetheart," Molly said, his voice warm and good and making Caleb smile even as he turned to face him. He thought that there was a reason he didn't want to do that, but of course he would do anything for his friend Molly, who was kneeling over him, smiling so very kindly. "Let me see your hands, there. Can you wiggle all your fingers?"
Caleb wiggled them, squirming a little as he did. He was very, very hard, and his skin felt tingly and sensitive all over, and Molly was smiling at him, which mattered more than any of the rest of it. Caleb smiled back, and wanted to roll over further, right into Molly's thighs, but didn't. Molly hadn't asked him to do that so far.
He thought Molly might, though. Molly liked that sort of thing. Caleb watched carefully, waiting for it.
"Yeah, this is why we don't do bondage with thread," Molly said, still smiling as he reached for Caleb's wrists, no trace of a reproach in his voice even though Caleb was aware that the words meant he had done something wrong. Molly wasn't angry with him; Molly was his friend, and Molly would fix whatever had gone awry. "We're just going to take this off before we have to deal with gangrene on top of everything else. I'm pretty sure you're going to need all your fingers when this is over."
Caleb keened a little, helplessly, at the incendiary touch of Molly's fingers on his skin—which hurt a little, he was vaguely aware. As soon as his hands were free he could feel just how much they hurt and knew that the only thing that would make him feel better was to touch Molly. Before he could think more than that he was tugging Molly down to him and kissing him, and Molly's tongue felt strange but so, so good against his, even better than Molly's coat under his hands with the heat of Molly's body behind it.
Caleb drew back for a breath and felt the pain in his throbbing hands, and reality crashed through whatever Molly had cast on him. He scrambled back to the wall, drawing his knees up in front of him and shoving his throbbing hands between them, though curling them away from the aching heat of his erection.
Molly hadn't asked Caleb to kiss him, hadn't even given permission. Caleb had just done it, just taken what he wanted, and that was exactly what he could not do, not and be willing to live through it.
"You're going to want to unbind your ankles, too," Molly said, unperturbed. "It's fine, Caleb, you're not going to hurt anyone."
"You don't know that," Caleb said, feeling the hunger still shuddering through him, desire still clawing at him, even when he looked at his feet which were a bit purple and bloody from the tightness of the thread binding. They didn't hurt properly, which he suspected meant that he really did need to get the thread off, but he wanted that far less than he wanted to be touching Molly, to taste his mouth again, to taste far more than that. "You don't know what I could do."
"I know you've gotten a serious dose of Moonweaver lily pollen," Molly said calmly. "I know there's no knowing how badly you're going to be affected, but it will get worse every time you get off until it peaks, and I know that no matter how long you manage to resist getting off, at some point the fever is going to render you incoherent and your body is going to take over. You're a lot more likely to hurt yourself or someone else if you let it go that long."
That matched what Caleb recalled reading once, long ago.
"I also know you can't beat me and Fjord both in a fight even when you've got your shit together," Molly went on, and Caleb glanced past him to see Fjord leaning against the far wall, arms crossed over his chest. "And I know that there's not actually gonna need to be any fighting, because if you want us to help you get off, we're willing to help. So nobody needs to get hurt at all."
Caleb blinked at them both, bewildered. "You—I can't ask—"
"You didn't ask," Molly said. "You asked Nott to lock you in, Nott checked on you, and she told us what's going on. And then Fjord and I volunteered to help out, because you're one of us and we look out for our own. Yasha's on deck if we need backup, and Jester's convinced she's gonna get some pros to handle it, which, hey, that'd be great if we can swing it. I feel like you might mind that less than the rest of us pitching in."
Caleb was aware that he was shivering a little, and also that his feet hurt very, very badly all of a sudden; he looked down and saw that Molly had the bloodied silver thread loosely coiled in his hand. He blinked stupidly at the sight, his brain still working on what Molly had said. "But you—that must be expensive?"
"Oh, yeah, I'm guessing there's no way we can afford it even with everyone contributing, but you know how Jester is," Molly said easily. "So that's why we talked over who can help you out. Me, I'm pretty easy, I've got very broad tastes that definitely include you, and I'm always willing to help out a friend in need, so I'm up for whatever."
Caleb looked past him to Fjord, who shrugged. "Can't say it's something I'd have been asking you for in any other circumstances, but I don't mind. Weird shit happens at sea, and you gotta be ready to help out a crewmate in a pinch."
"And Yasha can genuinely kind of take or leave sex most of the time, but she's not gonna let you suffer if she can help," Molly said. "But I figured Fjord and I would freak you out the least, because you seem like the type to let your chivalrous instincts get the better of you, and even if she could crack you in half with her pinky finger you think of Yasha as one of the ladies, don't you?"
Caleb grimaced. He mostly thought of Yasha as terrifying, but now that he considered it specifically—yes, there was a particular horror in the idea of hurting her that wasn't attached to, for instance, kissing Molly uninvited.
Though apparently it had not been quite as uninvited as all that.
Caleb blinked at Molly, focusing on him as that idea sank in, and Molly gave him an encouraging little smile. "So, while you're as close to your right mind as you're going to be, we're gonna talk about what you do and don't want to happen."
"I asked Nott to lock me in alone," Caleb pointed out. "That is what I want to happen. I don't want to hurt anyone, and I don't want to..."
He looked away, unable to think of a way to say it without confessing things he didn't want to think about, let alone speak of—especially not now, when he could feel this longing to draw someone close creeping through him. His thoughts were already beginning to be clouded by the urges of his body, and he knew it would only get worse.
"Well, we don't want to risk you dying and we don't want to wait until there's truly no other way to keep you alive but to fuck you when you're totally out of your head, so we're going to have to find a compromise. I was thinking," Molly said, "given how you set yourself up here, you might prefer to be restrained if we can find a way to do that that's not gonna injure you."
Caleb nodded, then winced. "I... yes, but I..."
He needed to be certain he couldn't hurt anyone. He also knew that once he let someone else restrain him, he would be helpless, and he would not remember afterward everything that had been done to him—and just thinking of that made him feel the walls of the asylum closing around him, as if he were falling back into those long dark years lost to his own clouded mind.
But this was now, and these people... there were ways he would never, ever be able to trust them, but he thought he actually could trust them to try to preserve his life and sanity. And what Molly said about his own preferences, and what Fjord said about his willingness, both rang true. And certainly Molly wouldn't betray Yasha to help Caleb; it was very clear where each of them stood in Molly's priorities.
Really there was no reason Caleb could expect any of them to help him, except that they were apparently willing to. He had not anticipated that at all, in what time he'd had to anticipate anything about this.
And still, he didn't know if he could let them.
"I think I might react badly," Caleb said into his knees. "To certain things. I... have some experience with being unable to... think straight, in situations where..."
He didn't actually know, was the worst thing. He really didn't know. It could have been nightmares he'd had during those confused and fogged-in years, or something he had feared would happen to him—or it might have happened, to him or to others around him. Likely it was some of each, and he would never know which blurred fragment of memory was which.
"Okay," Molly said. "That sounds like you've got some rough stuff in your past, or maybe you just have a reasonable fear of being hurt when you're vulnerable. We can say no penetration of your body, would that help?"
Caleb looked up, blinking. It couldn't be that simple, that matter-of-fact, except that Molly was giving him a patient, receptive look, and Molly had suggested it without Caleb having to find the words. "I think—yes, I think that would be my preference, if... yes. Please."
Molly nodded briskly. "And how do you feel about your parts going inside anybody else, if the other person is interested in using an orifice to stimulate you? And does it make a difference if it's a mouth, ass, or cunt? Man, woman, or—" Molly gestured to himself, "Agnostic? I'm told that matters to people sometimes."
Caleb blinked, experiencing a hideously distracting rush of memory and anticipation in response to just the words at the same time that some very calm and normal part of him was making a mental note to ask Molly what exactly agnostic meant in this context. Was that something he should have noticed and understood before now? "It... doesn't matter to me. If someone else wants. And if I can't hurt you, or... whomever."
He couldn't particularly imagine that question applying to Fjord, and could scarcely picture it for Yasha, though he supposed he should not make assumptions about anyone's preferences. And now, of course, he was very much imagining Fjord and Yasha in precisely that relation to himself, and had to press the back of his head against the wall, digging his fingernails into his calves. "Mollymauk, could you—do that again, and make me not think until you are ready to... do whatever you're going to do with me? I will not resist this time."
"Thought you'd never ask," Molly said, his voice taking on a familiar strange echo. Whatever he said next, Caleb forgot as soon as he heard it, as the words sent him down into blessed mental silence.
Chapter 2
Jester could see that the desk clerk remembered her from before, but didn't look exactly happy to see her. The clerk looked sort of apologetic. Jester could guess what that meant—after all, she'd promised to send word to the guards if Jester's package came, and the guards at the gate hadn't known anything about it when she asked.
She had asked in sort of a deliberately meandering way, to make sure they didn't pay too much attention to Beau wanting to come in with her, but still, she had gotten to the point eventually, and they had said they hadn't heard anything about a package for her at the Pillow Trove.
"Oh, no, I didn't come to ask about my package this time," Jester said airily, even though it would have been really helpful to have it today. That probably meant that money was going to be a Problem, but Jester was getting used to that, being out on her own, and anyway she knew enough to know that time was of the essence for Caleb, so she didn't have a lot of time to spend waiting around for someone to look everywhere to see if maybe the package was here. "I need to talk to Madam Luenna about maybe arranging some special services for a friend of mine who really needs some good attention as soon as possible."
The clerk's eyes darted to Beau, and Beau made a weird spluttery sound.
"No, no, not Beau," Jester put in. "I mean some attention would probably be good for her, but it's not really urgent right now. Could I speak to Madam Luenna, though? Please?"
"A moment," the clerk said, and disappeared after all. Jester sighed and leaned against the counter, hoping that this wasn't going to be like looking for her package.
Beau leaned next to her. "Uh, so... Madam Luenna is in charge around here?"
"Yes," Jester said. "She'll know who can help Caleb."
Jester glanced over at Beau, who was looking ill-at-ease in a way Jester had definitely seen before, whenever Beau was around particularly beautiful women. She got sort of angry, like they were being beautiful on purpose, at her. Which was particularly funny here, because of course everyone in the Pillow Trove would be beautiful on purpose, at their visitors, but it was part of their jobs so it was hardly a trick they were playing on anyone.
Jester knew that she probably shouldn't point it out to Beau, even if it was funny. Beau wouldn't think it was funny, and Beau was her friend, unlike the people Jester would have been happy to discomfit back home. Jester had friends now—lots of them! Although of course her very best friend was the same one as ever.
She heard a familiar chuckle as if it was coming from a little way behind her, and felt a familiar warmth. The Traveler knew, and he thought it was funny, and that was okay. He wouldn't tease Beau about it, so Beau wouldn't try to punch him.
Jester glanced over her shoulder, wondering if she could slip away from Beau and find a private spot to speak to the Traveler for a moment—she had a feeling she was going to need his help even if Madam Luenna turned out to be totally okay with helping Caleb for what they could afford to pay. Before she could try it, though, she heard footsteps descending the main staircase, and looked up to see Madam Luenna approaching.
"Oh, hi!" Jester called out, trotting over to meet her as she reached the bottom of the stairs. "Could we talk somewhere... discreet?"
Madam Luenna's eyebrows rose a little, and her mouth quirked into a semi-smile. "Discretion is our stock in trade, of course. This way."
She led Jester and Beau to a little office-type place not far from the front desk, which Jester thought was actually used mostly for an office and not just as the office setting for certain kinds of services. There were a lot of scrolls and inks and things on the desk that wouldn't be convenient to move, and the room was windowless and would be hard to air out thoroughly, but it didn't smell at all like sex things had been happening there, just like paper and leather and the little hearth fire.
Madam Luenna took a seat in an armchair away from the desk, and gestured for Jester and Beau to sit in the chairs nearby. Jester took the closest one and leaned across the arm to speak quietly to Madam Luenna. "I have a friend—who is not me or Beau—who has been exposed to a certain substance and needs to have a lot of sex about it as soon as possible. You know what I mean?"
She didn't want to say sex pollen now that she knew that Molly didn't like that name for it and it was probably sort of disrespectful to the Moonweaver, but she also didn't want to say Moonweaver when the Moonweaver wasn't supposed to be spoken of in the Empire. Before today she wouldn't have cared and just would have called it what she'd heard her mama's colleagues calling it, but Molly was her friend, and even if he wasn't here she didn't want to say things he wouldn't like.
Having more than one friend was really complicated, but Jester thought she was getting the hang of it pretty well.
Madam Luenna was frowning thoughtfully now. "Are you quite sure these effects were caused by a substance, and not by a spell or a curse? It would rather alter the case if either of those were a possibility."
"Well, yeah," Jester said. "Because if it's a spell it might just wear off on its own after a few hours or a day at most, and probably isn't powerful enough to actually kill him unless the caster was like, super motivated to mess him up, but if it was a curse then there might be a weird condition required to solve it like probably true love or some really strange riddle thing, and in that case he really might die, even just of exhaustion."
Madam Luenna looked faintly impressed. Jester preened a little, and then stopped to think about what exactly she knew about what was going on with Caleb and how it had started. Nott had said that Caleb had been exposed to something—and, actually, she had seemed like she knew about the pollen. Nott liked to do alchemy stuff, Jester recalled, so she might have learned about it that way. Goblins probably didn't care very much whether a plant was illegal in the Eempire, so maybe goblin alchemists made the strong distilled forms of the stuff.
"Pretty sure it was the pollen—substance," Jester amended hastily. "It was an accidental exposure, and if it was a spell or a curse..." Caleb would have known the difference. He was probably still in the lucid phase, from what Nott had said, and if there were a spell or curse involved he would probably have told Nott that so she would either not worry about him so much or would start searching for how to solve the curse. "No, I think we would know if it was something else, so I'm pretty sure this is from the substance. Yes."
"Mm," Madam Luenna said. "Well, as you are probably aware, the substance which causes those effects is highly illegal in the Empire, and while we do of course have a very cordial relationship with the crownsguard which spares us from many tedious regulatory concerns, that particular one would still carry a considerable risk for us. It's a service we can only offer to the most trusted of our patrons and is priced accordingly."
"Ah," Jester said.
That was a soft no, her mama had taught her. Madam Luenna was telling her she couldn't afford it instead of saying we don't trust you or your friend isn't worth risking all that trouble for. If Jester had unlimited funds she might be able to push through and make Madam Luenna reconsider, but she could understand that just because Caleb was in trouble, that didn't mean people who didn't know him were going to help him. They weren't Caleb's friends. Jester and Beau and Molly and Yasha and Fjord and Nott were. It was up to them; that was what Madam Luenna really meant.
"How much is accordingly," Beau demanded, leaning around Jester to stare at Madam Luenna.
Madam Luenna took a breath, glancing at Jester, and Jester smiled as apologetically as she could, reaching over to squeeze Beau's shoulder, hopefully hard enough to make her drop the question. Making Madam Luenna uncomfortable or making the whole conversation as awkward as possible wouldn't help now.
"No, Beau, it's okay, if we have to ask we can't afford it. But, Madam Luenna, if I just wanted to get a room here for me and a bunch of my friends to have like, a hard core sex party because we really want our friend to have lots and lots of sex because it's like, his birthday or a sex holiday or something, and we needed to have a pretty plain room with like, sturdy furnishings so we don't break anything, and maybe also a good set of attachment points on the bed..."
Madam Luenna relaxed a little at that, sitting back in her chair slightly, and Jester let up her grip on Beau and sat back too. She had done that right, then. Now they could negotiate for what was possible, even if it wasn't what Jester had hoped for. Mama had taught her that people with highly specialized skills had to be paid for highly specialized work—and she knew that even aside from the situation Caleb would probably be what even Mama would have considered a difficult client. Jester definitely would not want to be so rude as to try to bargain down to some minimum rate when asking Madam Luenna's people to deal with him.
"Yes, we could arrange that. For a special-use room like that—how many friends do you think you'll want to attend the party?"
"Oh, like, six aside from me," Jester said promptly. Maybe seven, but the Traveler never took up space unless he wanted to.
"Then let's call it twenty-five gold a night, with bath and laundry service included, and non-alcoholic beverages supplied throughout. You must remember to encourage everyone to stay hydrated when hosting that type of party, especially if it goes on for an extended period."
Jester nodded. They could definitely manage that; it wouldn't run more than three days at the outside, even with some time to rest and bathe and have their laundry done at the end, and someone—Beau, probably, or Jester herself—could go to the bakery or another little shop to get food when they needed it, so that wouldn't be too expensive.
"What about unguents," Jester put in. "I assume you can supply those?"
Madam Luenna looked a little amused again, possibly at how Jester lingered on the word. It was a fun word to say. "Unguents as in lubricants, or as in salves for minor irritations afterward?"
"Oh, probably some of each."
"For an additional gold per night, we'll assure that appropriate supplies are stocked in the room, and will resupply as needed during your stay."
Jester nodded firmly. "Then I think that is all we'll need. We'll be back later today to take the room."
"Let's get you the key now," Madam Luenna said, "so you can go straight there when your friend is ready to have his party."
Beau followed Jester back out of the Tri-Spire and halfway to the Leaky Tap before the tumble of thoughts in her brain finally spat out actual words. "Attachment points? You're planning on tying Caleb to something?"
It wasn't what Beau had meant to ask, but it was still better than the question that had been loudest in her mind: It's totally normal to swallow your tongue a little when Madam Luenna looks directly at you, right?
"Oh!" Jester said, and stopped right there in the street, shrugging off her cute pink bag and kneeling down to rummage through it. "Yes, usually at some point in the process it's necessary to restrain the sufferer so he doesn't hurt himself or anyone else, and you don't want to be trying to improvise when the time comes."
Beau opened her mouth to say something to that, and the words died on her tongue as Jester triumphantly hauled out a set of manacles.
"We should take these to Pumat Sol," Jester said, holding the manacles up for Beau to take. Beau took them, for lack of any better idea what to do in this situation. "I'll bet he can fix them so Caleb can't get out of them too easily."
Beau looked around to see if anyone had noticed her with her arms full of chains and Jester talking about making sure the person they chained up couldn't escape. She caught one dwarf giving them a disturbed look, but no one else was paying any attention to them. Beau smiled with all her teeth and the dwarf moved on.
Score one for those friendly manners Fjord was always talking about.
"Come on, Beau," Jester said, tugging at her elbow. "We don't have time to dawdle!"
Beau swallowed a snarl and followed Jester to the Pentamarket and into Pumat's shop.
Pumat, of course, spotted the chains immediately. Two of him did, actually, both giving Beau dubious looks. Beau glared back and hoisted the chains a little higher in her arms; she wasn't hiding them, she wasn't doing anything wrong, and she wasn't going to let some enchanter with four bodies intimidate her.
"Pumat!" Jester said, bouncing up to the counter where one of them was standing. "Do you have any enchantments that could make sure my friend can't get out of these manacles or do a lot of magic with them on? We need it for sex purposes, we're going to have a lot of sex and my friend is like, super repressed and needs some help to relax."
The Pumat behind the counter blinked slowly at Jester for a moment, then looked up straight at Beau. "That okay with you?"
"I mean, whatever, it's not really—" Beau stopped and redirected as she realized what Pumat meant. "Why does everyone think—not me. Caleb."
"Ah," Pumat said, looking back and forth now between her and Jester as another Pumat drifted as-if-casually out from the back room. "And how does Caleb feel about that?"
"He's fine with it, of course!" Jester said cheerfully, like she couldn't see that Pumat was half a second away from casting Hold Person on both of them and yelling for the crownsguard. Which was sort of nice, Beau supposed, because an enchanter who didn't care if you were going to use his products to rape somebody wasn't an enchanter she would want to have given as much money to as they collectively had.
On the other hand, she really did not want to have the crownsguard called on her and Jester today. Or ever.
All the Pumats in the room focused on Jester as she went on, "He really really needs to, he just gets nervous, so obviously we will talk everything out with him beforehand because he's our friend and we are not horrible people, but he's sort of busy right now and couldn't come to the store with us so we're just handling the supplies."
"Mm-hm," Pumat said, giving Jester a more skeptical look than Beau had ever seen anyone maintain in the face of Jester's whole... Jester-ness. "There is an enchantment that we've already developed for this type of purpose, but it will only work as long as everything is fully consensual. The manacles will only lock when the person wearing them closes them, and they will impart the codeword to him and open again when he says it. They will also give him a non-verbal code to use if he can't speak."
"Oh, that should be fine," Jester agreed promptly. "And he won't light anything on fire if he just sort of gets startled?"
"His casting ability will be dampened while the manacles are on, but if he really feels like he needs to cast a spell, it will be easy for him to get loose and do it."
"Yeah, that's good," Beau put in. "That's exactly what we want, so he doesn't get hurt and neither does anyone else. We wouldn't want anything bad to happen to our friend."
"That's what we like to hear. Let's see those manacles, then," Pumat said, putting out one large hand, and Beau stalked over and dumped the chains onto his hand and the counter.
"Mm, these have been enchanted before," Pumat said, and another Pumat moved closer, leaning close to look at the chains and the runes engraved on the closures before looking up—one looking at Jester, the other at Beau. "These were used for prisoner transport."
"Yeah, we found them on a dead guy," Jester said blithely, while Beau took a careful step back from the counter, seriously considering abandoning Jester to her fate and making a run for it. "I mean, he'd been dead a really long time, he was just, like, a skeleton, so we didn't think anyone would mind if we took the manacles, and now it turns out we need some, so it all worked out!"
"That does seem like a bit of serendipity," Pumat said, glancing back down at the manacles. "Although if you were planning to use them in the kind of classic bondage style, these wouldn't be the best design. They're not really made for binding someone in place, just for limiting movement."
"Oh," Jester deflated a little for the first time. "Do we have to go get different ones? I guess we could ask the blacksmith, we just don't have a lot of time..."
Two of the Pumats studied Jester intently from different angles, while the third whispered in one of their ears. Finally the nearest one said slowly, "Is there... some kind of important reason why you need these manacles right away?"
Beau fought to keep her face blank and resisted the urge to slap a hand over Jester's mouth, which would give the game away pretty fucking badly. Madam Luenna had been cool about the pollen situation, but Pumat worked for the fucking Cerberus Assembly. They absolutely could not discuss substances sacred to forbidden gods with him. Beau had been pretty sure Jester knew that before they came in here, but...
"I mean, just that we already got the hotel room and everything," Jester said, in an airy tone that screamed trying too hard across Beau's senses. "But I guess if it's going to take longer then it's just going to take longer."
"I see," Pumat said, two of him still staring at Jester while she didn't make eye contact with anyone. "Well, in that case, I would hate to create a scheduling problem, and it so happens that I have a set of manacles in back that would do what you need them to do, all ready to go."
Jester's chin jerked up, lips parting to ask why he hadn't said so from the start, or possibly why he had never offered to sell them sex manacles any other time they'd visited.
"Specialized item," Pumat said with a shrug, while another one went into the back room. "Not gonna go offering it to folks who just want weapons and healing potions and wizard paper and whatnot. But it does seem to happen, from time to time, that someone just completely forgets to buy the manacles beforehand when scheduling an event like yours, so sooner or later it pays off to have a set on hand. If you want to trade me those to make my next set with, I could let you have this set for..."
"Four hundred gold," said the Pumat coming out from the back with a box that might as well have had DISCREET PACKAGING stamped on every side. "And as it's quite an easy item to scour clean, we'll buy it back for three hundred if you don't want to keep it for future use."
Jester bit her lip, looking over at Beau with a genuinely troubled expression, and Beau shrugged sharply. "We need them? Gonna ruin the whole... theme party you had planned otherwise?"
Jester nodded. "I just... I don't have all of..."
"Yeah, yeah, I got half," Beau said, stepping up and reaching for her coin purse. "We'll get the others to pay shares later or... whatever. Let's just get what we need and get going."
Yasha and Nott were leaning against the wall near the back of the Leaky Tap, where they could keep watch on the street and also the back alley, where the entrance to the hidden cellar was. Jester hurried toward them, aware of Beau trailing a little behind.
"Is that where Caleb is?" Jester asked, glancing toward the entrance. "Is someone with him?"
"Molly and Fjord," Nott said, wringing her hands a little. "Did you...?"
"I got us a room at the Pillow Trove," Jester said, like she'd never planned to do anything else. "For whoever wants to help Caleb—he'll be safe there, and we can keep him still so he won't hurt himself or anyone else."
Nott nodded, like she'd forgotten there was any other plan and so Jester didn't have to explain anything. "Molly and Fjord and Yasha are going to... help him, so if there's a safe place I think that's all we need. How will we get him there, though? He's not at his most... presentable."
"Oh, I had an idea about that," Jester said, glad that the others had already settled who would help with the messy parts. "Why don't you all go get ready to go, and I'll talk to Molly and Fjord and Caleb and see if we can do my idea or if we need to do something else."
Nott looked up at her for a moment. "Is it a good idea?"
It wasn't actually an entire idea at all, but if it worked it would definitely be the best idea. "Maybe? If it's not I think it will be clear pretty quickly that it won't work and we can think of something else."
"Tri-Spire has to get supplies somehow," Yasha put in quietly. "If we clean the cart out really well, get some stuff to look like goods, say we're making a delivery to the Pillow Trove..."
"Ohh, that is a good idea!" Jester said brightly. "Um, except... we left that manticore head in the cart, didn't we."
"Yeah, there would probably have to be a lot of cleaning," Yasha agreed. "And we don't know how much time Caleb has. So maybe... maybe that isn't our first plan."
"Right, so, I will try my thing first and then if not maybe we can ask Pumat Sol to do that little spell he did to make Caleb all clean to our cart?" Jester offered. Pumat had been pretty sympathetic in the end; Jester was pretty sure he knew why they had needed the manacles in a hurry, but he hadn't asked even as many questions about it as Madam Luenna had, and he'd taken care to be sure that Caleb couldn't get hurt. He might be willing to clean out their cart and make it a pretty color, for a little more money.
Of course, they did not have much more money on hand right now, or at least Jester didn't. But she wasn't going to worry about that right now. She had something that was almost a plan.
"Okay, so now we have a plan about plans!" Jester said brightly. "Go get ready for the Pillow Trove!"
All three of them looked dubious, but Jester made the sort of elegant shooing motion her mama would make when she was being very nice about trying to get rid of someone. None of the others looked any less dubious, but they went, and that was what Jester needed.
Once she was alone, she could duck around the corner into the empty alley, shut her eyes, and whisper, "Traveler? Are you here? I really really really need your help for my friend Caleb."
"He does seem to be in a predicament," the familiar voice said, and Jester squeaked a little and started to turn, only to feel his hand on her shoulder, keeping her still and facing away from him. "And so much chaos and mischief might just call for a little balancing... subtlety."
Jester bounced on her toes. "Balance is very important."
"So it is," the Traveler murmured, and she felt a brush of air as something swept by behind her, and then a weight settling over her shoulders, bearing a familiar warmth and a familiar scent.
She gasped, reaching up to touch the Traveler's green cloak.
"If he wears that," the Traveler murmured, "no one but you will be able to see him or notice he's there at all, and you can take him wherever he needs to go. But I'll need that back, child. It isn't the sort of thing that can be released into the material plane for long without... consequences."
"Of course, of course," Jester whispered. "Thank you, Traveler! I will tell Caleb all about you, and I will draw you so many pictures..."
"Oh, yes, I expect this will be quite a spectacle. I'll be interested to know which parts of it you find most important to commemorate."
Jester nodded thoughtfully. She had seen, here and there over the years, a lot of sex happening. But she'd never been in a room with friends of hers while they were having sex. Unless—
"Traveler, do you ever—" Jester started to turn, felt the weight of the cloak swinging around her, and remembered she shouldn't—but the alley was empty again.
"I'll definitely draw all the best parts!" Jester promised, and then she ran for the cellar door.
Molly stared at Caleb and felt a lot like he had when he'd been new enough to the circus that his family's various stunts had still been startling and irresistible to watch. It was a particular blend of admiration and disbelief that any mortal person could do that. It left Molly with a marveling sense of kinship with Caleb that was probably not quite the proper reaction to be having right now.
"How long's it been?" Molly asked without looking away from him.
"Since the last time you asked me that, or since Caleb checked the fuck out of this plane of existence?"
"Either," Molly said, ignoring Fjord's tone.
Fjord huffed and finally came over to crouch beside him, just out of arm's reach from Caleb, who was slumped against the wall, legs sprawled heedlessly with his hands resting palm-down on his thighs, no tension in his fingers. It was a shocking contrast to the straining hardness of his erection.
"Fucked if I know," Fjord muttered. "Caleb's the one with the clockwork always running in his head. Why don't you ask him?"
Molly gestured emphatically. "Are you seeing this? That's not me doing that, Fjord. That spell has to have died by now, and probably within a few minutes after I cast it. This is just him now."
"What'd you tell him to do, anyway?"
"Go away inside, where nothing can touch you," Molly repeated, in common this time. "And apparently he knew right where he was going in order to get there, because—" Molly reached out and snapped his fingers a few inches from Caleb's nose.
Caleb didn't so much as twitch. He was barely breathing. Honestly the blood-flush of his dick and its rigid state were the strongest signs of life Caleb was showing right now.
The door slammed open behind them, and Molly jumped to his feet, whirling around to stand shoulder to shoulder with Fjord, facing whoever was coming in and concealing Caleb behind them.
There was... definitely someone coming in. Molly squinted, staring, and he was really pretty sure there was someone there, but the harder he looked the more his head swam, and—
Jester giggled and appeared suddenly, sweeping some uncanny darkness off herself and bundling it into her arms. At Molly's side, Fjord jumped all over again. "Jester? What the hell—"
"I borrowed something from a friend of mine," Jester said cheerfully. "For Caleb, so we can get him to the Pillow Trove. I got us a room, and they will keep us supplied with hydrating beverages and unguents, and I got some manacles from Pumat Sol..." Jester knelt on the floor and slung her bag off, keeping the cloak of possibly-divine invisibility bundled up under her arm.
"Hang on, back up to this friend of yours," Fjord said.
"The Traveler?" Molly put in. He was as surprised as Fjord that Jester's god might turn out to be that tangibly helpful—or, in all honesty, not her imaginary friend from childhood—but it did seem like the obvious conclusion to draw from the facts before them.
"Yes!" Jester said brightly, flashing a huge smile at Molly as she reached into her pink haversack and pulled out a rattling mess of chains to show them. "We shouldn't put these on him here, I guess? Unless we need them to get him there. Why's he being so quiet?"
Jester leaned around them, and when Fjord leaned to one side like he wanted to block her view, Molly huffed and stepped aside. She'd told them where she grew up, and she was old enough to look if she wanted to; no doubt she'd be getting nearly as much of an eyeful as any of them shortly.
"Ooh, that's nice," Jester said, which Molly had to agree with—not that Jester had seen any of their dicks to best advantage before now, but Caleb did have a dick best described as "nice." Not too big, not too small, unadorned and straightforward the way human genitalia mostly was: nice.
Molly did not look over to see how Fjord was taking Jester's pronouncement.
Jester frowned and dropped the manacles when she got closer, holding her hands up between her and Caleb and moving them this way and that—not like she was blocking out the sight of him, but like she was checking scale and proportions with her fingers as a guide. "Ohh, Nott is right, Caleb really needs to eat more. He's malnourished."
Molly glanced back. Caleb definitely looked like he could use a nice layer of fat over his ropy muscles and jutting bones, but Jester hadn't remarked on it at the bathhouse, or any other time. He couldn't resist asking, "Is there something about seeing him with his dick hard that makes that more obvious?"
"Yeah, it's not actually that big, but it looks so big," Jester said, still frowning. "But it's an optical illusion because the rest of him is so thin."
"See, I would've said it's the fact that you can see all his ribs even from the front," Fjord said slowly. "But yeah, agreed, if we get him through this alive we really oughta make sure he's not skipping meals or anything. Molly, any thoughts on how we're gonna—"
"Caleb!" Jester half-shouted, darting between them to kneel right in front of Caleb.
Caleb's whole body jolted backward like he'd been hit with lightning, his eyes flashing open and focusing immediately on Jester's face—so apparently that was one way to pull him back to reality. Molly wondered if it was something in the tone of her voice, or just... Jester.
Caleb's face flushed dark red instantly, and all his limbs drew in, his knees clamping tight to pin his hands in place. He was pressing back into the wall like it might let him escape inside.
"Jester," he said hoarsely. "You shouldn't—I can't—"
"I know, but it's going to be okay," Jester assured him firmly, and somehow Caleb actually did seem to be assured, which was not the reaction that Molly had gotten right out of the gate. "I got you this special cloak to wear! When you wear it no one can see you but me, so we can walk you right into the Tri-Spire and go to the Pillow Trove, okay? Once we get there it's all taken care of, and then you don't have to worry about anything."
Caleb's eyes darted to Molly and Fjord. "You—you said—Jester wasn't—"
"Ah, yes, Caleb has delicate sensibilities, my dear," Molly put in, tugging Jester back a little. "Can I put the cloak on him, or are you and Caleb the only ones who can touch it?"
Jester tilted her head, studying Molly. "I think, as long as you understand that this is a gift from the Traveler to help Caleb, and we have to return it as soon as we get Caleb there safely—"
Molly gave a solemn nod, raising a hand in some vague approximation of an oath-making gesture.
"Then it should be fine. But I will stay in the room, so you don't lose Caleb once it's on."
"We certainly don't want to lose Caleb," Molly agreed, holding out a hand for the cloak. It felt mostly just like a cloak in his hand, except that he couldn't quite fix his eyes on it. He stopped trying and looked to Caleb, who was squinting uncertainly at it.
"Close your eyes, keep it simple," Molly advised him. "Just like if you were looking through Frumpkin, right? All you have to do is hold Jester's hand and follow, and we'll worry about getting you there."
Caleb nodded and a few seconds later he closed his eyes and held a hand out. Molly tugged him up.
"Oh, your wrists! Caleb!" Jester darted in to cast a healing spell, and the nasty little cuts the thread had left around Caleb's wrists and ankles faded to nothing as Caleb got to his feet. He didn't straighten up fully, staying hunched around his belly like he—well, like he had a nasty cramp somewhere in his midsection, which was probably about what that hard-on felt like by now.
Molly settled the cloak over Caleb like he was covering an animal's cage to quiet it, and the effect was oddly similar; he faintly heard Caleb give a sigh that sounded like relief, and the shadow he couldn't quite focus on seemed to get a little taller.
"Perfect," Jester said brightly. "That's it, Caleb, you're doing great. Come on!"
She headed for the door with one hand held out and trailing a little behind her, and Molly fell in beside Fjord and followed.