"I hope you all don't mind, I'm a little out of practice."

Grant the Bard sat in front of a crowd, normally one of his favourite places to be. This crowd, though, was hostile. They weren't about to let a Bard get the better of them. The bartender, a slight man, seemed as concerned about them as Grant was and wasn't about to intervene.

Grant pulled his lute from his bag, as well as a small wooden trapezoidal object. He put it up on the table next to him, opened the front. "This will help me keep time." He unhooked the metal arm from its latch and set the weight to a level midway down its length, continuing despite the crowd's jeering, then held up his hands for... calm, if not silence, as he released the device and the arm began swinging at a nice, even pace. "As I said, I'm out of practice, and if you want a song," ("A song or we'll break your arms, Bard," one of them said, repeating a threat she'd made earlier, to the renewed jeers of the crowd) "I will need some help keeping time."

"You can keep time with my thumpin' on yer head!" a loud, burly man hollered.

Grant was unperturbed, at least openly. He hadn't done much to disturb the crowd, they just didn't like offworlders. "You want a song, you'll have a song." He strummed on the strings experimentally and started fiddling with the pegs. "I must have at least a little quiet so I can play in tune," he said, and that at least earned him a brief respite, a few seconds of control.

It was enough, he knew.

"The metronome," he said, plucking, listening to, and tuning the bass string, "was a gift to me by—"

"Don't care!" shouted another woman, and everyone laughed.

"Now now," Grant chided. "A Bard's art is as much speech as song." He tuned the next string, adjusting the tension, almost naturally easing into a pattern of pluck-test-adjust that synced up with the click-click of the metronome. "So it would do well if you'd listen, listen," he went on to the third string, "even as I prepare."

He hadn't used his talents a lot lately. He hoped they would come as naturally as the songs he wasn't able to forget.

"The words I use are as much a part of the story, story I tell, as the music I play." What was hopefully coming across as a nervous tic, the repetition of certain words in time with the ticking of the metronome, was part of the plan. "You can't simply expect, expect a Bard to just set up and start, start strumming."

A couple heads were nodding in time with the clicking, now, and a couple bodies swaying in time with his plucking. Good. He played a chord, and, despite his dissatisfaction with the tuning, it still brought a little more attention, a little more calm, a little more silence.

"So while I'm talking, talking, and you're all listening, listening, it's not hard to imagine, imagine that I'm so entertaining, entertaining that you just have to pay attention, attention to every word."

That did it. The metronome clicked out over and over again, cutting through the silence in the room.

"And you can hear, hear my lute playing every note, note, every song, every melody, melody that you remember, that makes you," he started to strum in time with the metronome, "happy, or nostalgic, or sleepy, or calm, or wistful..."

And there it was. Everyone lost in their own emotional state.

"And then the music switches up. Songs of love, of admiration, courtly romances, knightly quests... and then, lusty ballads, bawdy rhymes..."

And playing this chord just so, and putting just this much music into his voice, and being just precisely in time with the click, click, click, he could start the final manipulation, that would let him get clear unscathed. Lusty ballads and bawdy rhymes, Grant thought again with a grin, as the first moan from the back of the room broke the silence.

That first moan seemed to give permission to another, and another, and soon everyone was turning to the nearest person, or people, rapt and lost in the music and magic, touching, kissing, embracing, forgetting entirely about the Bard they were just moments ago ready to toss bodily from the bar, at least, and likely to rob and beat as well.

As the first clothes started to fly, Grant put the lute down and walked to the bar, picking up his half-finished drink, and looked over at the bartender. He had planned to finished his drink, pack up his gear, and sneak away during the orgy, but the raised eyebrow and flushed grin he got as he downed his ale suggested that perhaps he could slip out under cover of darkness instead.