The airs of bugle, fife and drum filled the streets of the city, making the boom of fireworks a fitting crescendo. Gangs of young apprentices, drunk on the wine that flowed from the city’s fountains, roamed the streets singing patriotic songs. Every twenty or thirty minutes, canon fire boomed from the castle that brooded over the city, where King GarGar and Queen Pirouette were celebrating their twentieth wedding anniversary, as well as a glorious victory over their loathsome enemies. That would explain the madness that seemed to grip the entire city.