II
He Has His Reasons
There were three main reasons that Shay was intent on stealing the Prince of Jaws' cock. They were as follows.
Reason One
He had heard from several colleagues and friends that, on the subjective, sliding scale of 'cock niceness,' it was really very pleasant to have inside oneself. On the larger side but not too big, nice girth, slight upward curve. Just on the pleasant side of 'that fits nicely' and if you found the right angle, 'oh that's a bit big,' in case that was how the mood took you.
Their praise was always tempered by how much of a turd the Prince was, unfortunately. To hear it told, his faecality didn't always reveal itself straight away. Which, he supposed, explained how so many of Shay's colleagues and friends found themselves enjoying his "royal prerogative" in the first place, only to later discover that the royal in question was a boor. "Sweet at first, then once he had gotten what he wanted, a right Royal pain," as one of them put it.
Shay wasn't kidding himself. He knew that size and shape was only a fraction of the consideration. Attraction was always going to be more about the wielder of the weapon than the weapon itself, but he was in a peculiar situation. If his stolen bad-magic ritual worked the way that it was supposed to, he could be the wielder of any weapon of his fancy (willing donation or otherwise), so for his intents and purposes, it really was more about the aesthetics of the phallus in question. And, since he was shopping around, why not get one that was purportedly very nice?
Reason Two
He knew for a fact that it was healthy and disease free. For a family as wealthy and well protected as the self-styled 'Royal Family,' of Port Jaws, the Jaws family physician required remarkably little bribing to spill his secrets. The family itself had come to power a generation ago. The Prince's father, "King" Gregor the First, had consolidated his power amongst the criminal underworld of Port Jaws, offed the Mayor, and declared himself King.
It was that simple to do, apparently. Shay supposed it made sense out here, in the edges of known Aergrund. Travel between settlements was difficult and dangerous, and the bone-shapers hadn't put through a major thoroughfare to somewhere so far out in the boonies in centuries. Law was whatever the most powerful person said it was. And "King" Gregor said he was King, so really, that pretty much made it law.
Apparently the King's Physician was as much a crook as the king used to be. Shay went to a ramshackle building on the proximal side of the river, and let himself in, pushing open the old, brass-handled door with some effort - the hinges were stiff with dirt. The marble floor wasn't much better off, and there were festoons of dust and cobwebs in the vaulted ceiling. Presumably, the Royal Doctor did his physicking elsewhere. Shay had a hard time imagining one of the gilded lilies of the Royal Family coming down here for a check up.
There was a fabula sat at the desk. In The Psalms of Sin and Harmony, one of the fabula characters, Kalharid, was described as a "dream of a dream of a man." While Shay thought that was a mean way to describe someone - they were people, after all - he also couldn't say that it was wrong. The fabula in front of him, for instance, had an indistinct face, sort of male, with auburn hair, but the shape, features and style were hidden. When he looked away, he had the impression that they were distinct, but when he looked back, it felt like they had changed, and when he looked away again, he could no longer remember what they were. Plus, there was this sense of nascent familiarity, like this was a person that he might have once met, in line for a newspaper at a stand, or as a waiter, on holiday in a distant land.
"May I help you, sir?" the fabula asked as he approached. Shay was wearing one of his more commonly used faces; healthy cheeks, noticeable jaw, blue eyes, black, side-parted hair. Handsome, but rounded and smooth; few hard lines. And he wore a well tailored charcoal grey suit.
"I was hoping to see the doctor, please. I hear he's the best."
"He is," he replied, sitting up and opening their appointment book. "We have a slot free next week, on Tuesday, at eleven?"
"Oh, I was rather hoping to see him today. My understanding is that he's open to discussing donations to his charitable enterprises." Shay pulled out his pocket book and deposited a number of promissory bills - good for the gold value wherever you could find a bank willing to redeem them - and slid them across the counter. That was what he had been told to say by another colleague. He was an investigator looking in to claims that the Prince had fathered a child with a member of his household staff and then turfed her out for "immodest behaviour." His work had brought him to the doctor's office a few months ago. From everything Shay had heard, he was willing to bet it was true.
"Ah," the young man at the desk said. "Well Doctor Eltastus is actually free right now and I'm more than sure he would be happy to discuss it with you, I'll take you up."
That was all it took; a few notes in the right hand, and the same hand transferred them reverentially to the good doctor's desk, a few moments later, when he showed Shay in. The doctor himself was a human, pale, old, silver hair, round glasses. Ironically, Shay thought, the sort of doctor one would picture if you said "trust worthy old doctor," and he had to imagine that was the whole idea.
He'd constructed some waffle as a pretense for the doctor. It was something about the prince being rumoured to be very virile and wanting his health regime, but it hadn't been needed. The old man had hand-waved and say "What do you want to know?" and that was that. Ten minutes later, he was back on the street, heading towards the river, with the full knowledge that the Prince was healthy and clean as a whistle.
Reason Three
The Prince was supposedly a boor, but Shay had heard much, much worse.
Firstly, there was how the family had become the royal family in the first place. Their criminal racketeering and extortion simply adopted the new garb of the royal tax collector, when Gregor declared himself king, and continued as they had the day before. The tax laws were wildly punitive, unless you could pay bribes, and the punishments were extreme, often involving breaking limbs.
Shay had his own, deeply unpleasant experience with a tax collector a few weeks after arriving in Port Jaws. The man, who as far as Shay could tell, was one large muscle with a head attached, had visited him at his apartment. He told him that if he didn't start paying the back taxes that he owed, he would visit him again and extract "the value from your flesh, personally." He wasn't sure if this meant violence or something else, but there had been a sinister and slightly sexual undertone, and Shay had paid on the spot.
It was from this edifice of corruption and human misery that Prince Antonio of Port Jaws drew his wealth. If he had any clue, he seemed to pretend that he didn't, at least in public, but there were plenty of rumours that he knew, condoned it, and often oversaw punishments himself.
Then there was the ever expanding number of people that claimed he had fathered children with them. The Prince seemed to need help controlling where he planted his seed. Only last week, Shay himself had seen a young woman turned away roughly by the royal guards at the Prince's mansion on Waldren Street.
It had been raining, and there weren't many people about, so it was easy to see and hear what was going on. Her dress was well-to-do, but shabby; she had clearly fallen on hard times and the overcoat she wore over her skirt and blouse was threadbare at the edges. She had shouted something about it being "his son," at the house in general, while the guards laughed and shoved her away with the hafts of their pikes. A friend told him that the day before it had been the same thing, and the week before that bystanders had to intervene when one of the guards knocked down a woman holding a baby, which she claimed was the Prince's.
Rumours were worse; he heard over and over again that "the Prince had a gaggle of bastards the size of several noble houses combined." 'Noble Houses' here, of course, being the cronies that Gregor had rewarded by elevating them to the aristocracy. Scandal rags went with the most salacious headlines, but even more considered papers spent their narrow column inches on speculation about the apparent epidemic of women who claimed they'd borne the Prince's love child.
Dr. Eltastus had clinched it for Shay; the old man had sighed, taken off his glasses and wiped them.
"There's a strong possibility that they're all his," he had said, before sliding his glasses back on with a grim smile, "but good luck trying to prove it."
As far as Shay was concerned, this was real shit-heel behaviour, especially considering his wealth, and the sheer number of chemical or magical prophylactics available on both the day and night markets. Constantly impregnating women and letting them get on with it was a fucking choice, and Shay intended to help the man make a different one.
It was bad enough that a lot of the women involved basically said 'we were drunk and extremely incautious,' and were pretty mad that his response was basically, 'sounds like your problem.' But there were a few that said anonymously, that the Prince had sworn he was using some kind of prophylactic. Often, Shay heard through whispers, that these were ladies of the 'nobility', who couldn't really make a big fuss without tarnishing their reputations, or sometimes, their marriages.
Either way, the whole thing vindicated Shay's pending appendage theft, as far as he was concerned. If you were the type of hubristic narcissist whose womanising and philandering were his proudest achievements, who gave no second thoughts to his by-blows, who seemed to derive pleasure from the misery he caused, it was really poetic justice, if someone came along and took you down a peg and marbles, wasn't it?