'I don't know any . . . s-songs,' said the toymaker. 'I never got taught s--songs. Just how to make toys. I was 'prenticed at making toys. Seven years before the little hammer, man and boy . . .'

'It says here,' said the Duc, making a creditable impersonation of someone reading the charge sheet in front of him, 'that you don't tell the children stories.'

'No-one ever told me about telling . . . s-stories,' said the toymaker. 'Look, I just make toys. Toys. That's all I'm good at. Toys. I make good t-toys. I'm just a t-toymaker.'

'You can't be a good toymaker if you don't tell stories to the children,' said Lilith, leaning forward.

The toymaker looked up at the veiled face.

'Don't know any,' he said.

'You don't know any?

'I could t-tell 'em how to make toys,' the old man quavered.

Lilith sat back. It was impossible to see her expression under the veil.

'I think it would be a good idea if the People's Guards here took you away,' she said, 'to a place where you will certainly learn to sing. And possibly, after a while, you might even whistle. Won't that be nice?'

The old Baron's dungeons had been disgusting. Lilith had had them repainted and refurnished. With a lot of mirrors.

When the audience was over one member of the crowd slipped out through the palace kitchens. The guards on the side gate didn't try to stop her. She was a very important person in the small compass of their lives.

'Hello, Mrs Pleasant.'

She stopped, reached into her basket and produced a couple of roast chicken legs.

'Just tryin' a new peanut coating,' she said. 'Would value your opinions, boys.'

They took them gratefully. Everyone liked to see Mrs Pleasant. She could do things with a chicken that would almost make it glad it had been killed.

Ogg sniffed.

'Cor,' she said. 'Talk about garlic!' And, indeed, bunches of it hung from every beam. 'You can't have too much garlic, I always say. I can see I'm going to like it here.'

She nodded to a white-faced man behind the bar.

'Gooden day, big-feller mine host! Trois beers pour favour avec us, silver plate.'

'What's a silver plate got to do with it?' demanded Granny.

'It's foreign for please,' said Nanny.

'I bet it isn't really,' said Granny. 'You're just making it up as you goes along.'

The innkeeper, who worked on the fairly simple principle that anyone walking through the door wanted something to drink, drew three beers.

'See?' said Nanny, triumphantly.

'I don't like the way everyone's looking at us,' said Magrat, as Nanny babbled on to the perplexed man in her very own esperanto. 'A man over there grinned at me.'

Granny Weatherwax sat down on a bench, endeavouring to position herself so that as small an amount of her body as possible was in contact with the wood, in case being foreign was something you could catch.

'There,' said Nanny, bustling up with a tray, 'nothing to it. I just cussed at him until he understood.'

'It looks horrible,' said Granny.

'Garlic sausage and garlic bread,' said Nanny. 'My favourite.'

Tags: Terry Pratchett Discworld Fantasy
Source: readsnovelonline.net