Fanfic Time: My Baby Now(12)

Spring to Summer would have been a delight, were it not for having to do politics. Keeping his Barons behaving themselves was a distraction from caring for his family. Poor Aldiirn. He kept behaving like he expected to be ignored. The twins needed their Papa. Aldiirn needed his Dad.

His Barons needed to be chased around with a gottsverdammt switch.

The tiny heirs to the throne had a staff, true, but Kosh would never let himself be as uninvolved as his own father. He could change diapers and burp them or pace with them as they were inconsolable about their horns or their teeth. The proper father things. And while they were sleeping and the daylight still shone, he could squeeze lessons in martial arts with Aldiirn. The lad was a natural at the covert parts, and had excellent breath. Kosh always appreciated a fast study, strengthening the weaker points while gently encouraging what he had down pat.

The sand ran out of the hourglass and Kosh reluctantly returned to the accounting with a groan.

"Did I do something wrong?"

"Not you, liebchen. These verdammt Barons of mine. Tansie's book-keeping is a waking nightmare, and in order to sort out whatever fucked-up shit he's trying to pull, I have to unfuck these piles of ill-organised paperwork."

Aldiirn peered over Kosh's elbow. "Oh. You can not get that terrible by accident. That's deliberate. I'll need a piece of pure, clear quartz with no flaws, a live spider, and an ink-cap. As well as a copybook, please."

"Any particular species of spider?"

"Anything that spins a web will do."

"Then all I need is a minute." Without much fuss at all, but with the right breath, Kosh stepped into one shadow and out another. Onto the streets of the city where gem-vendors would be plying their trade. He overpaid for the quartz, and knew it, but this was a matter of urgency. It balanced out. His vendors generally gave discounts to the desperate and never applied the Tiefling Tax. Another jaunt took him to a fallow field where some ink-caps had sprouted in the shade, then to a little place he knew where spiders always liked to lurk.

He might have overdone it, but he kept his word and was back in a minute with the basket. And a half-dozen new copybooks.

"I only needed one of each," protested Aldiirn.

"I suspected, but... now you can pick the best." He handed over the basket with full respect and stood back to watch his son work his magic. It was a ritual, that much Kosh could tell.

Aldiirn put the spider on the glass of the spherical bottle there on the desk to improve light. Placed the tangled accounting inside that beam. Next, linking the tangle with the blank copybook via the crystal. Pointing from the tangle to the blank. The ink-cap, large and mature, completed the triangle. The key to it all was the caster himself, playing a song related to the passage of time and the importance of truth.

Line by line, entry by entry, the whole tangled mess turned into proper double-entry bookkeeping. In a fraction of the time it would have stolen from his days under ordinary circumstances.

And laying Tansie's attempted scam bare.

"Oh, meine kluges kind... Clan Asshole was fucking stupid to let you go. Liebchen. Can you teach my accountants this spell?

Instant nervousness. Doubt. Poor child probably thought he would be teaching his replacement.

"I'll have more hours for you, and the rest of my family, but if you'd rather work, you should get a wage. Not that I'm fond of kinder working for their keep... It's your choice, liebchen. It's always your choice."