Nighthand Versus Nappies Nighthand Victorious
Fidens Nighthand was a tall man: taller than the vast majority of doorways. And he was strong. He barely felt the weight of the little child whom he carried on his shoulders.
‘You and me, Teren,’ he said. ‘We are making great progress through the days, I think.’
It was true that some of the aspects of the child’s care – nappies, for instance – seemed both gruesome and complicated. They had at first almost defeated him – until Gallia, who had experience of such things, had offered to teach him.
‘You pin them to the inner layer of cloth,’ she croaked. ‘Never to the baby.’
So for several days Teren the Immortal child and Fidens Nighthand the Berserker had got on supremely well. The fendthorn’s leaves had waved in the breeze.
‘I told Vigo Nex,’ Nighthand said, ‘that I was no longer in the treasure business. That was untrue of course. I am in the business now of protecting living treasure. You, and Irian, and the young ones, and the creatures.’
With his spare time, he wrote love poems for Irian, and laid them on her bedside table for her to find on her return from Atidina, where she was tending to a herd of unicorns. He had never in fact read a poem, and had only the loosest sense of what they involved, but he tried.
Irian Guinne: our hearts are twin.
Your soul is rare: and very fair.
Your face is perfect:
Nothing rhymes with perfect.
Nighthand was vaguely aware that there might be something lacking in the poems, but nonetheless he persisted.
On the fifth day, though, he began to be restive.
‘I wonder, Gallia, why they’re not yet back?
I’ve sent out the ratatoskas for news, but none have returned.
I should go to Atidina. They’ve been gone longer than I expected. ’
‘She said a few days,’ said Gallia. ‘And you have sworn not to take Teren off the island!’
Nighthand looked long and hard at the sharp-faced old bird. It is hard to tell if a gagana is lying: they are naturally inscrutable.
‘Gallia,’ he said. ‘Is there something you’re not telling me?’
‘No,’ said Gallia. ‘Or at least, yes. There are many thousand things, Nighthand, I have never told you. For instance, do you know the story of how the borometz wool tax was standardised across the islands?’
And the man, ferocious and bristling with weapons as he was, found himself defenceless in the face of her lecture on the economic history of mid-century Lithia.